If You Love Something, Let It Go
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: An unusual applicant lands in Dean Taylor's office, and the results could strain the Taylor's marriage. Includes backstory and future story.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

Tami Taylor entered her new job as Dean of Admissions at Braemore College the way she entered everything in life – with a supreme self-confidence and idealistic vision that could only end in an eventual emotional beating.

Her husband watched with tight lips and offered her a strong shoulder when the first few light punches began to make tiny dents in her idealism, and when she came home in tears after her third month at the job, he held her close and told her she was going to pull through.

"I'm probably going to end up fired!" she muttered into his chest where they lay in their new queen bed in their small master bedroom. Braemore hadn't precisely set them up "college style" as Tami promised him, unless you were thinking first-year dorms when you thought "college style."

Her employer had given her a "housing expense" of $200 a month to "make up for the price differential," but the Taylors had found housing prices in Philadelphia to be 2.5 times as high as those in Dillon. Even with the two full-time jobs, they hadn't upgraded their dewelling. Besides, they were still helping Julie with college, if by "helping" you meant paying her full tuition and fees.

If anything, the new house was slightly smaller and certainly older than the house in Dillon had been. Their two-story, three-bedroom Philadelphia affair was thirty-six years old, and the floorboards of the front porch needed repainting. Eric was "getting around to it," just as he was "getting around" to putting up a fence so Gracie wouldn't wander off into the woods and creek that backed up against their lot. At least they had a little land, and the neighborhood was relatively safe, and they were zoned for a good elementary school. They'd have to move by the time Gracie reached 7th grade, however, because Tami had already deemed the junior high to be subpar.

"That's ridiculous," Eric told her now. "You're not going to end up fired because you lost _one_ file."

"I should never have asked you to move."

"I'm doing fine with the Pioneers." Eric had entered his new job the way he entered everything in life – with caution and a slight concern that he might not be able to achieve what he wanted to achieve. And, as usual, he'd outperformed his own expectations and begun to revise those expectations in the process, with Tami's encouragement. His confidence was ballooning while hers was deflating.

"You still hate it here," she reminded him.

His arms tightened around her. "I'll get used to it."

"The committee rejects half the applicants I pull hardest for!"

"Well…" Eric replied cautiously, "that means they accept half, right? There's a limit to how many they can take, right?"

Tami knew what it was like to get a second chance in life, and she wanted to hand out a few more second chances. "Yeah, but…they said they wanted to hire me because of my ideas, because they were tired of the status quo, but they're still afraid to give up their admissions formulas. Why did they hire me if they don't want to listen to my advice?"

"That's how I felt half the time when I was an assistant coach."

"Well I'm not the _assistant_ dean," she insisted, rolling away from him and onto her back. "I'm _the_ Dean."

He propped himself up on one elbow and kissed her frowning lips. "You'll shake 'em up eventually, Dean Taylor. You always do." Then he lay his head down beside hers and turned his eyes up at her. "You're tense, babe. Want me to help relax you?"

She snorted. "I'm not in the mood to relax. But with a massage….I might get there."

**[FNL]**

Dean Taylor found the missing file. She'd accidentally shoved it in Gracie's backpack when she was getting her ready for preschool one morning. She'd been a bit frazzled and pressed for time that morning, because Eric was supposed to drop Gracie off, and he'd had to leave early for work at the last minute for an "emergency meeting" with his assistant coaches. It had something to do with an impending change in eligibility requirements. Tami didn't know. She went to his games, but she didn't follow his coaching adventures as closely as she would have in Dillon. Pemberton wasn't _the_ town high school here, it was just one of 49, and she never had reason to set foot in it. No one talked about high school football in the grocery store check-out line. They never interrupted the national news with the local high school football scores. The Pioneers stadium had less seating than the Dillon _Junior_ High stadium.

She was putting the newfound file in her office cabinet when there was knock at her door. Tami had a panel interview, but not for another thirty minutes. The candidate looked intriguing – he wanted to get a master's in English, but he'd only maintained a 2.0 average in his English minor in undergraduate school. He'd majored in math, and in that subject he'd earned a 3.84. His choice to pursue graduate studies in English rather than math therefore intrigued her. He'd also taken six years to get through college, working his own way through.

She opened the door to see a young, auburn-haired man with blue-green eyes. She'd gotten pretty good at determining the ages of college and graduate students, and she'd put this kid at 23, maybe 24. She observed he was well built and good-looking, but she didn't notice it in a creepy, cougarish sort of way. It was simply a factual observation on her part.

Clearly her secretary had already gone to lunch (Tami was supposed to be grabbing lunch herself) or this young man would not have made it to her door. "May I help you?"

"I'm Josh Sanderson. You're interviewee?"

"Your appointment isn't for another thirty minutes, honey. The panel isn't assembled."

"Dean Taylor, I was hoping I could speak to you alone for a moment."

Tami sighed. She'd been warned that students who were rejected would seek her out to beg for second chances, but she hadn't expected them to come to her _before_ they'd even been interviewed. "That's not really proper protocol. The whole panel has –"

"- I'm withdrawing my application anyway. I just wanted to talk to you."

"What?"

He motioned inward into her office. "Please?"

When he was seated opposite her desk, Josh let his hands rest nervously on the knees of his jeans and swallowed.

"Now why would you want to withdraw your application?" she asked him.

"I got a job offer as a math teacher at a private high school. They don't need me to be certified or anything. But…I really only applied in the first place because I wanted to meet you."

"Meet _me_?" Now this was a peculiar turn of events.

Josh shifted in his chair. "My mom died recently. Before she died…she told me I was adopted. So, I got curious, you know?"

For some reason, Tami's mind turned to that moment four years ago when she and Eric sat on the couch, waiting for their fifteen-year-old daughter to come home, hoping Julie hadn't leapt into sex too soon. Back then, Tami was relieved to the point of tears to learn Julie hadn't.

And then Dean Taylor's memories flitted to a day when she sat in a parked car with Julie, who had at the time been chasing that dark-haired Swede. The Swede had humiliated Julie, and so Tami confessed to her about how, when she was fifteen, she had gone to a party and had sex with a boy and thought it meant something, only to find that the next day the boy acted like he didn't even _know_ her.

That was two years before Tami's mother had sent her to live with her uncle in North Dillon, two years before she'd met Eric. Tami had been humiliated far more than Julie had been humiliated by the Swede (Julie hadn't slept with the boy, thank God). Tami had wanted her daughter to know it was possible to pick yourself up and move on from anything. But she hadn't told Julie the _whole_ story. She hadn't told her daughter about the difficult decision and all the regret and pain that had followed.

"So I did some research, you know?" Josh said. He raised his eyes to meet hers.

Tami's head felt unexpectedly light headed. It was November, but the room was hot. The room was definitely hot. So hot Tami thought maybe she was going to faint.

"And…" the young man said, his voice trembling a little, then shoring up – "I think you're my biological mother."

Tami gripped the edge of her desk. "But….those records were sealed."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Tami didn't understand how Josh had managed to track her down, with the adoption records being sealed, but he said he had _connections_. What kind of twenty-four-year-old has _connections_? He'd had a good life, obviously. He'd grown up in Austin and attended the ridiculously expensive Southern Methodist University in Dallas, from which he had graduated with honors and without college debt. His adoptive parents had given him a much better life than Tami ever could have. Tami had given Julie a good life, but Julie had come along five years after Josh, five years of hard work and self-improvement, of marriage and settling down into stability.

Josh Sanderson had grown up with a Jewish mother and an Episcopalian father. He'd been bar mitzvahed _and_ confirmed, and he didn't know what he believed or what he wanted out of life. He didn't even know who he was. He was hoping Tami could tell him, but Tami couldn't tell him much of anything. She could only promise to meet him for lunch the next day. She didn't tell even him that he had two half-sisters, not yet.

When he asked why she gave him up, she said, "I was fifteen when I got pregnant. Sixteen when I gave birth to you. My father was dead, my mother was poor…and I didn't want you to have the only life I could afford to give you."

Josh studied the lines of her desk. "If you love something," he muttered, "let it go."

"Something like that," she replied softly, though she hadn't ever given herself much of chance to fall in love. She'd thought about the baby, on and off, over the years, prayed he'd had a good upbringing, reburied the guilt, wondered how he'd turned out.

And then, suddenly, here he was – a stranger – a stranger who resembled her just enough that she believed he wasn't making it up. But in case she didn't believe him, he showed her a photocopy of the birth record he'd somehow managed to get unsealed, with her maiden name, Tami Hayes, and the name of the teenage boy to whom she had given her innocence, the boy who acted like he'd never met her the next morning. He'd offered her money for an abortion when she finally told him she was pregnant, saying, "Even though I'm probably not the father." _Of course_ he was the father. She'd been a virgin.

She'd been a fool.

"Josh," she said, and the name sounded odd on her tongue, "I hope you don't believe…." She didn't have the words to defend herself.

_Josh_. His adoptive parents had named him _Josh_. Tami had made a list of names, before she'd decided whether or not to keep the baby. Taylor had been her number one choice at the time. It was popular in Texas that year, and she hadn't yet met Eric Taylor. The baby would have been Taylor Hayes, of course, not Taylor Taylor, and Taylor Hayes sounded kind of cool, like a movie star almost.

But Josh Sanderson was nothing like Taylor Hayes, who in her imagination would have been a rugged sort, not this nicely dressed, tentative young man in front of her, with short-cropped hair and a red silk tie.

"I know you have to get back to work," Josh told her. "Tomorrow then? Maybe you can tell me about my father? Maybe I can meet him?"

"I haven't spoken to your father in over twenty-four years, honey." It was natural for her to call many a young man "honey," but she felt suddenly ashamed of it, as though she'd been assuming she had a right to an endearment to which she'd given away her right. "I...it was a fling. I was young and foolish." Her face grew red to admit it, to remember how careless and self-deceived and blind with lust she'd been. "But I'll tell you what I can."

[***]

**A/N:**

SO….I'm trying to decide before I continue this - Should Eric already know about this past birth and adoption or not? It happened before they knew each other in this story, so he doesn't have to know, but it's also hard for me to imagine Tami keeping a secret from him that long. Do I do the more realistic thing – where she's told him at some point – or do I do the more angst-ridden dramatic thing, where she hasn't?


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

There was a reason Tami Taylor told her fifteen-year-old daughter that giving oneself away too young could make a girl cynical and jaded.

Tami herself was fifteen when she walked into that abortion clinic, alone and afraid. She tried not to look around the waiting room at all of the other faces, some young, some middle-aged, some indifferent, some frightened. She pretended to thumb through a magazine. When they called her name, she stood, her legs feeling suddenly wobbly. She took two steps toward the nurse who waited in the open doorway, swirled around, and walked as fast as she could out the front door.

**[FNL]**

For the next several weeks, Tami wore baggy clothes to hide the weight gain. She stopped going to parties and hanging out with friends. She kept to herself. But soon enough, it was going to be too obvious she was pregnant.

Tami was terrified to tell her mother, a strict, religious woman. Dad had died three years earlier, in an explosion in the Texas oil field where he worked. At least she wouldn't have to tell him. Although, maybe if her father had lived, Tami wouldn't have found herself looking for love in the wrong place in the first place.

When Tami told her mom, the woman wept. That was almost worse than if she had lashed out with a scolding. Mrs. Hayes wept as though Tami had died, although Tami wondered if she would have wept even that much at her funeral.

**[FNL]**

Tami had the baby just after she turned sixteen. No one was in the room with her but the doctor and the nurses. Her mother insisted on waiting outside. Several times before the adoption papers were signed and sealed, and especially when she held the baby in her arms for the first time, she thought about keeping the child. But what kind of life would that have been for little Taylor Hayes? Tami was practically a girl herself, and she couldn't afford to raise the boy. Tami's own mother could barely afford to raise them. They'd had to visit the food pantry more than once in the past year. Little Taylor was going to have a chance at life. He was going to have a middle-class, married mother and father who could give him the best education money could buy. And Tami was going to have to forget this ever happened.

But she couldn't forget. There were whispers in the hallway her junior year of high school. She was "the girl who got pregnant." She wasn't the only one in Kingsville, Texas, but she was the only one in her school _without_ a boyfriend. She felt friendless and alienated, and she spiraled into a depression. She didn't eat much and quickly lost her pregnancy weight. That year, Tami failed geometry and earned Ds in most of her other classes. She talked about dropping out of high school. Her mother, who was struggling to make ends meet supporting Tami and her little sister, was beside herself. She didn't feel she could handle Tami any longer, so she sent her to live with her Uncle Raymond in North Dillon.

Tami felt cast aside as she sat silently in the passenger seat during the almost five hundred mile drive from Kingsville. For the first time, she was struck by how truly enormous her home state was.

Tami had met her Uncle Raymond only once, before the age of three. All she knew about him was that he was the brother of her mother, a widower, and a Methodist minister. She supposed her mother must think that only a preacher could finally straighten her out. Visions from _Jane Eyre_ played in Tami's mind on the drive up - images of the cruel, cold, aloof minister admonishing and judging a lonely orphan girl. She didn't want to leave the car when her mother pulled into the carport beside the two-bedroom west Texas rambler.


	4. Chapter 4

.** Chapter Four**

Uncle Raymond turned out to be nothing like the picture Tami had painted in her mind. He was not fierce-eyed, grizzly-faced, gray-haired, and stern. He was twinkle-eyed, baby-faced, and blonde. And above all, he was mild.

Uncle Raymond held a degree in both theology and psychology, and if it weren't for grace at meals, his quiet Bible reading in the early morning, or his suddenly being summoned to minister to parishioners in the late hours, Tami might not have guessed he was a pastor. He talked about God far less often than her own mother had.

At dinner time, Uncle Raymond would ask her softly about her interests and her plans and tell her about the town that was now to be her home and the people who were now to be her neighbors. He encouraged her to make up for lost time and helped her to enroll in summer school so that she could pass Geometry the second time around and enroll in Algebra II her senior year.

A boy name Mo McArnold was also in her summer school class, not because he had failed but because his father insisted he bring his grade up by retaking the class. Mo flirted with her, and though she was gun-shy from her past mistake and hadn't dated anyone for over a year, she found herself responding to his flattery. They were a couple before the school year even started.

There was no need to sneak out of Uncle Raymond's house to go to parties or see Mo. He said she could come and go as she pleased, as long as she obeyed his four rules: (1) Homework gets finished first. (2) No drugs or alcohol. (3) No staying out past 11 o'clock on a school night. (4) Tell me when you'll be home and where you can be reached in the event of emergency. "_If_ I can trust you to do that," he said, "there won't be any other rules."

But after her third date with Mo, he did ask, "Are you on birth control, Tami?"

She flushed a brilliant red. Not even her mother talked to her about such things, but for a _man_ to ask her? It was mortifying.

"I'm not going to have sex with Mo," she muttered. There was no way she was going to risk another pregnancy at 17. Not even birth control was enough assurance for her. She might brush up against the line...but she was determined not to cross it.

"Then don't let him pressure you," Uncle Raymond told her. "If he does, he's not worth it. You know that, don't you?"

"I know," Tami answered.

Uncle Raymond had nothing more to say about Mo, but he was always standing at the window when she got home from her dates. Then he'd hastily turn around when she walked in the door, pretending that he was looking for a book in the bookcase against the wall beside the window. There were four such bookcases in the living room, two in the hallway, and one even in the kitchen. Tami supposed there were probably more in Uncle Raymond's bedroom, but she'd never been in there.

It felt good to have a popular boyfriend, the star of the North Dillon Eagles. She even got named homecoming queen - her, the new girl, Tami Hayes, who had been the subject of whispers and sneers just a few months ago.

Sometimes, Tami went to watch Mo's football practices after school, and she couldn't help but notice the Eagles young assistant coach Eric Taylor. She learned about him through the gossip of the girls who hung about the bleachers waiting for their football-playing boyfriends to finish practice.

Eric, Tami learned, was only 19. He'd been on the Eagles himself just two years ago, as an exceptional quarterback, and he'd received a scholarship offer to Texas A&M. But they revoked the offer when he broke his arm badly in the spring of his senior year of high school. Not being able to afford the tuition and other expenses, he remained in North Dillon and went to community college instead. He was planning to transfer to a four-year college for his junior year, once he'd saved up some money, and meanwhile he worked nights as a church janitor (at Uncle Raymond's church, nonetheless) and as an assistant coach for the Eagles. It was said he was too young to be coaching, but the head coach liked him. It was rumored Eric wasn't getting paid for the coaching job, that he was doing it for the experience.

Tami learned some about Eric from Mo as well, but what she learned was that Mo resented him. They'd been teammates two years ago, and now Eric was "bossing him around."

"Well," Tami said, smiling, "he's a _coach_, Mo."

"Yeah, but the damn red light, green light drill he does. Making me run so damn much. What's up with that?"

"Well, don't you have to run in football?"

"It's stupid. It's a stupid drill _he_ made up," Mo muttered. "I don't know why Coach lets him make up his own drills."

One day Tami stayed late after school to get some help from her Algebra II teacher. Mo was supposed to give her a ride home, but he apparently forgot, because the parking lot was cleared outside the locker room, except for three cars, none of which was Mo's. She went into the coach's office to ask to use the phone. Coach Taylor was alone in there, watching game tape, his feet up on the desk. He swiveled his feet down immediately when he saw her, sat up, and paused the game tape. "You lookin' for Mo? He's gone on home."

She was surprised he knew who she was, even to know her as Mo's girlfriend. Even though he'd been classmates with these guys, he didn't hang out with them anymore.

"It's like he's entered a different realm," Mo had complained, "like he thinks he's one of them."

"One of who?" Tami had asked.

"The coaches."

"He _is_ one of the coaches."

"No, but like, he thinks he's an _adult_."

Tami didn't tell Mo 19 was, legally, an adult. Or that at 16, she'd already been a mother.

"No," she answered Coach Taylor now. "I just wondered if I could borrow the phone to call my uncle. I live eight miles away. Can't walk."

Coach Taylor motioned to the phone and stood up from the desk and made himself busy. Uncle Raymond wasn't home, but he wasn't at the church either. Coach Taylor offered to give her a ride home. "I'm on my way out anyway," he said.

The skies were an angry gray when they got in his pick-up, and within a mile, the rain was a torrent. It got to the point that he couldn't see the road, so they pulled off into the parking lot of a diner and ran in, coats over their heads, to wait it out.

It stopped raining within thirty minutes, but they didn't stop talking for another hour after that. Tami had never found it so easy to fall into conversation with someone, which was odd, because Coach Taylor had a reputation for being reserved.

They talked a little about football, then books (he read a lot, which was something she didn't expect of a jock), then why she was here. She omitted any mention of the baby, of course, but she talked about her desire to bring up her grades and start afresh, and he encouraged her. They talked about movies (they both liked comedies) and music (they had completely different tastes in that realm).

Finally, she said, "My uncle's going to worry about where I am."

He apologized and asked for the check, and Tami realized with embarrassment that she didn't have any money on her.

"It's okay," he said, "I've got it."

When he dropped her off, she said, "Thanks, Coach Taylor," and he replied, "Call me Eric."

And when she went to bed that night, she smiled over those three little words, _Call me Eric_. There was something so intensely personal about it. And then she wondered why she was thinking about him at all. She had a boyfriend. A boyfriend her own age. She'd gotten in trouble with an older boy before. Gotten pregnant by him, imagined they would have a relationship the next day, and then watched him walk away like none of it ever happened.

She resolved to put Coach Eric Taylor out of her mind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

The Sunday after Tami promised herself she would not think about Eric Taylor, she noticed him in the very back pew of the church. She sat in the front pew, because it seemed to be expected of her as family of the minister. Since Uncle Raymond's wife had died, and they'd never managed to have kids, Tami was, in fact, the only family of the minister.

Eric was practically sitting alone. There were two blank spaces between him and the next parishioner, and she wondered where his family was and why he came if they didn't make him. She peeked back once or twice, as surreptitiously as she could, and saw he was dozing off during the sermon.

When church let out, Eric made a side run around the main exit where the handshaking line formed. She supposed he wasn't going to congratulate Uncle Raymond on the sermon he'd slept through. She followed him out and watched him as he tossed the football around with some of the younger kids, scooping one up by the waist and twirling him around upside down after the kid made a good catch.

Eric looked so different than he did when he was coaching on the football field. He seemed so much less serious now. He was laughing and goofing off and not barking at anyone. Watching those little boys try to climb all over him made her think of her own little boy. He would be over one year old by now. She hoped he had a daddy who would play with him like Eric was playing with those laughing kids.

Some woman hijacked Tami's attention for a conversation she didn't want to have, and ten minutes later she saw that Eric was gone. She made her way back into the foyer and found him guzzling coffee while picking over the last remnants of the donuts. "Did you like the sermon?" she teased.

"Uh…yeah," he answered. "You're uncle's a really fine preacher."

"Why thank you," Uncle Raymond said, drawing up beside them and sliding his stole from his neck. The crowds had thinned out and no one was trying to shake his hand anymore. He rolled the stole into a ball and rested it on the half-cleared table. "Did you like my reference to current events?"

Uncle Raymond had made absolutely no reference to current events in his sermon. He'd thrown in some ancient poetry and an allusion to the Civil War.

"Oh, yeah," Eric answered. "Got to make it timely."

Uncle Raymond smiled. "Did I get the football analogy right, do you think?"

There hadn't been a football analogy either.

"Close enough," Eric said. "It made your point."

Uncle Raymond laughed and slapped Eric on the back. "Looking forward to your game next Friday. Y'all got to get that quarterback of yours to be more of a team player, don't you think?"

Mo had ignored one of the plays last Friday in an attempt to grab the glory and had possibly cost the team a touchdown. He'd been embarrassed about it, Tami thought, and tried to cover up with bravado.

"Yeah, well, you know, McArnold's kind of a pain in – " Eric stopped, mouth still open, like he'd suddenly remembered Tami was there. "We've got a good team this year," he concluded. "They'll come around."

When Uncle Raymond had left to change out of his robe, Tami said, "It's okay. I know how Mo can be sometimes. He's got all that high energy and he doesn't always pause to think. But he's a good guy."

"Mhmmm…" Eric murmured and took a sip of his coffee. He was looking at her strangely, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"Nice suit," she said. She was only trying to break his unreadable gaze, but he did look especially handsome.

"Thanks," he replied. "Nice dress." He tossed his empty cup in the trash can, looked at the contents, and sighed. "I hate when people drink only half a cup and then just dump it in there. I've got to empty all those this afternoon." Eric, Tami knew, worked odd hours at the church, sometimes afternoons, sometimes nights, but never on Friday nights, of course. "Makes the bag all droopy and heavy."

"Bastards," Tami agreed, and then felt embarrassed for swearing in church about her fellow parishioners. She felt less embarrassed when Eric smiled.

"Well I better go," he said. "Sooner I get started, sooner I can go home."

"You do janitorial work in a suit?"

He loosened his tie. "Nah. I keep a change of clothes in the sacristy."

"The what?"

"The…whatever you Methodists call it. Where the priests keep the robes."

"We don't have _priests_. Aren't you Methodist?"

"Episcopalian. Well, my parents are. I haven't been to church in a couple years."

"You were at church today," she reminded him.

He shrugged. "Condition of employment."

"No way." She couldn't imagine Uncle Raymond making church attendance a condition of employment for a janitor. Her uncle didn't even demand that _she_ go to church, although she felt like she owed it to him somehow. Her life with Uncle Raymond these past few months had been far more pleasant than it had been for the previous three years with her mother.

Eric smiled again. His eyes twinkled a little when he smiled, and it made them even more arresting. "An _unspoken_ condition," he said. "Well, it just seems polite. Anyway, you have a good afternoon."

She watched him disappear down the side stairs.

Putting Eric Taylor completely out of her mind wasn't going to be quite as easy as she thought, but Tami renewed her vow to do it. No more hanging out watching Mo's practices but _really_ watching Coach Taylor. No more cornering Eric alone.

No more.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

The following Tuesday, Tami found herself in the coaches' office asking to use the phone. She had stayed late for Algebra II tutoring again and needed a ride home. But instead of calling her uncle at home, she called the weather. As the voice droned on in the background, reporting the temperature, she pretended to leave a message on her uncle's answering machine.

"Guess I should try him at church," she told Eric, who was hunched over a playbook on the other side of the head coach's desk. The head coach was looking at Tami with a slightly impatient smile.

She called the number for time next, adding extra digits to make it look like she was making a real call. While the recorded voice on the other end of the line told her it was 4:45, she said, "So he's not in his office. Oh. Okay. Thank you." She hung up the phone and sighed while looking despondently at Eric.

"I can give you a ride," Eric said. "I have to get going anyway." He closed the playbook. "Can I take this home with me?"

"When are you going to have time to look at that at home, kid?" the head coach asked. "You've got to work tonight from 8 PM to midnight don't you? And then you'll be sleeping for a few hours, and you've got to be here by 8 AM sharp for morning practice."

"I've got from now until work."

"Leave it, Taylor."

Eric reluctantly released the playbook.

While he drove her toward home, Tami talked about how she was going to take the SATs again to see if she could bring her score up enough to compensate for her bad grades the previous year. She wanted to go to college.

"You should go to A&M," he said. "Good school."

"You still want to go even though they revoked your scholarship?"

"I don't really hold it against them. I knew it could happen. I'm going to try to walk on to the team. My arm's pretty good now. I've been doing physical therapy."

"I don't think I can get in there," she admitted. "I'd have to really ace my SATs to make up for my GPA."

"I've still got an SAT practice book leftover from high school," he said. "It has six practice tests and I only did one."

"Didn't study much?"

He shrugged. "I was supposed to be getting in on football anyway. But I did a'ight on the test."

They swung by his place to pick up the practice book. He lived in a small house in a semi-suburban neighborhood. Tami had thought Eric lived with his parents, but when he opened the door and they walked in, the first thing she saw was a gorgeous young woman in the kitchen. There was no way she was Eric's sister, not with that lightly brown skin and those fierce, dark eyes. "Hey, Eric," she called.

"Hey, Maria," he replied. "This is Tami. She's a student at the high school where I coach. I'm getting her an SAT prep book."

"Can I offer you some sweet tea?" Maria asked. Tami made her way through the little living room to the kitchen bar with a sinking heart. Eric disappeared to one of the bedrooms to look for the book.

Of course he had a serious girl. And not just a girl, but an _older_, experienced girl. This woman looked to be in her early twenties. And they were _living_ together. Tami shouldn't have been flirting with him. It wasn't fair to this woman. It wasn't fair to Mo, either, but that's not what she felt guilty about. She felt guilty about the smiling woman who had just pushed a glass of cold, sweet tea across the counter to her.

"So," Tami asked as she ran a finger up the condensation on the side of the glass she'd been offered, "How long have you and Eric been together?"

Maria laughed. "Oh honey, Eric's my brother-in-law. I'm married to his older brother. Robert's four year's older than Eric. I don't date boys."

"Eric's not really…." Tami's voice fell, "…a _boy_."

"He's very mature for nineteen, yes," Maria said, and smiled softly at her. "But I'm twenty-three."

"I thought he lived with his parents." When they'd hid out from the rain in the diner, he'd said, _I still live at home, but not much longer now._

Maria shook her head. "Just before Eric's senior year of high school, their dad got a new job in Dallas. Eric didn't want to move with his parents. He wanted to finish off high school in North Dillon. So he just moved in with us."

"You had this place already?" Tami asked.

"Robert started his own handyman business in high school. He never went to college., but he does pretty well for himself. And my in-laws gave us ten percent for the down payment, especially since we were letting Eric live with us."

When she said "in-laws" Tami glanced at her hand and noticed the ring she'd overlooked. No engagement ring – just a wedding band.

The front door swung open and a man walked in whom Tami immediately recognized must be Eric's brother. He was about four inches shorter, and his hair was a much lighter, sandy brown, but his eyes were very similar. Not that Tami had been studying Eric's eyes, or anything, but, well…..she had noticed.

He slid off his tool belt and left it by the coat rack in the small front hall. Maria introduced them. Robert drew a beer from the refrigerator, popped off the bottle cap, leaned back against the fridge, sized Tami up, and said, "Thank God Eric finally has a new girlfriend."

Maria slapped him on the shoulder.

"What?" Robert asked. "It's time he started getting over Cindy. He's been moping around for three months."

Tami flushed red. "Oh…I….we're not…."

Eric, who had just emerged from his room, put the SAT book on the kitchen bar beside her and looked accusingly at his brother. "She's a student at the _high school_," Eric said tightly, and Tami felt like even more of a fool.

"Oh, sorry," Robert said, "You look like a college student."

Maria invited Tami to stay for dinner. Her face went from Robert's to Eric's and Maria's as they interacted over the table, laughing and teasing one another with warm affection. Dinners had never been like this at home, even when her father was alive. Tami's mother and father argued more than was comfortable, about the most mundane things, and, after he died, dinners were mostly silent, except for Shelley's prattling.

"Eric here," Robert said, pointing his beer bottle at his little brother, "Could really help you study for the SATs. He got 1250 on his."

"Without studying?" Tami gasped.

"It was only 1150, actually, Bobby," Eric said, lifting his water glass.

"Oh, yeah," Robert replied. "That was _me_ who got 1250 wasn't it? Yeah…that's right. I got 100 points more than you."

"Too bad you didn't apply to college with those scores," Eric replied with a smirk.

"Yeah, sucks to own your own house by the age of – "

"- Boys," Maria interrupted. "Someone get the pie out of the fridge please."

Eric rose and lightly, playfully smacked his brother on the back of his head as he passed. Then he turned and pointed to Tami. "Hey, pretty lady, you like your cherry pie with ice cream?" he asked.

Tami smiled and nodded. For the first time in over three years, she had begun to feel a sense of belonging. She could get used to this new world of North Dillon.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

Tami called her growing feelings for Eric a school-girl crush and swore to herself that they were harmless. At practice, Mo would run up to her at the fence and kiss her and Eric would come up, glare at him, and say, "On you own time, 17. On your own time." And Mo would roll his eyes and run back to the field. Then Eric would smile at Tami, look down at the turf, and walk away smiling.

She stayed after school for math tutoring on Tuesdays and always went to the coaches' office to "borrow the phone" to see if her uncle could pick her up. Of course, he never could, especially when she was always calling the weather, and especially when she knew Eric would always offer to drive her home when her uncle couldn't be reached.

Tami began to imagine that Eric liked her too. She thought of it as an innocent, mutual flirtation. She had no intention of cheating on Mo. Mo was the boyfriend who had restored her to popularity, and he was fun, and he took no for an answer when it came to going "too far." Tami liked Mo well enough. But the truth was, she thought about Eric more often.

**[FNL]**

Thanksgiving at Uncle Raymond's house was a bustling affair. He took in twelve people who had no family to eat with. Football played non-stop on the living room television while people filled their plates buffet style from the kitchen bar. They sat at card tables and on the couch and even on the floor. There was still enough food to last a week by the time they all cleared out, and the place was a bit of a mess. Tami was surveying it and feeling a little overwhelmed by the work that lay ahead when the doorbell rang.

"I'm giving Eric Taylor a little extra cash to help out with all this," Uncle Raymond said as he headed for the door.

Tami's heart took a sudden leap. _Be still_, she commanded herself.

"He's good at the clean-up," the minister said when Eric walked in.

"When there's money involved, I'm good at _anything_," Eric replied. "When there's not, I'm mostly just good at football."

Tami laughed. "Oh, I bet you're good at a lot more than that."

Eric glanced back at her as he followed Uncle Raymond to the kitchen.

Later, exhausted from the clean-up, Tami and Eric sat in the rocking chairs on the back porch. Uncle Raymond creaked open the screen door and offered Eric a beer.

"I didn't know the job came with free beer," Eric said. "I'd of come over sooner."

"Well, I don't drink and someone left a six pack behind, so you have to help me out." Uncle Raymond slid into the third rocking chair. "They haven't changed the drinking age yet have they?"

"Nah, and when they do, I'll probably be grandfathered in." Eric clicked the can open with a hiss and pointed it at Tami. "She probably won't be able to drink until she's 21."

Tami had already had her share of beer, at the parties she'd snuck out to when she was a young teenager, those years following her dad's death. But she hadn't had a sip since she'd moved in with Uncle Raymond.

"So how's the family?" Uncle Raymond asked Eric.

"Good. My folks are down for Thanksgiving, so I'm on the couch tonight and they've got my room. My dad just got a promotion. My mom found a job too."

"She hasn't worked in years, has she?" Uncle Raymond asked. "That'll be good for her. She's got a sharp mind. Needs to put that to use."

"Yeah," Eric agreed, "she's a smart cookie. Don't know why she was dumb enough to marry my dad."

"Eric!" Uncle Raymond scolded. "Don't disrespect your father like that."

"Sorry, Reverend."

"I know you two have had your issues, but he's your father. And he's been there for you." Just then the phone rang and Uncle Raymond went inside.

"Oh, yeah, he's been there a'ight," Eric confided to Tami when the screen door shut. "Like a hawk. Watching and judging every move. I can't tell you what a relief it was when he got that job in Dallas and let me stay here. "

Uncle Raymond must have gotten a call from one of his talky parishioners, because he didn't come back out for another forty minutes. Meanwhile, Tami and Eric talked about their respective families to one another, openly, as if they'd known each other for a long time. There was one family member, however, Tami did not mention, however much he haunted her memories – the one she'd given away.

**[FNL]**

At Christmas, Uncle Raymond and Tami made the seven hour drive to Kingsville, Texas so Tami could spend the holiday with her mother and sister. Uncle Raymond was letting her drive.

"Keep at least a car length between you and the car in front of you," he warned her.

She rolled her eyes but eased off the accelerator. "Why is it you haven't spent a Christmas with us since I was three?" she asked him. "Why did I hardly know you existed before Mom sent me to live with you?"

He looked out the window. "North Dillon's a long way from Kingsville."

"Bullshit."

"Language."

"Sorry. I just mean…thirteen years is a long time not to see your own sister," Tami said.

"We talked on the phone. I sent your mother money for the mortgage after your father died." Tami hadn't known that. She'd never considered how her mother had managed to keep the house with a minimum-wage job. "I didn't just leave you girls hanging. But I don't make a whole lot as a pastor myself. And my wife had _a lot_ of hospital bills before she died. I could only send my sister so much."

"Did you have a falling out or something?" Tami asked. "I know my mom can be….the way she can be."

He turned from the window to her. "Tami, this isn't really your concern. Take my advice and just let it go."

"How long have you known me?"

He smiled. "A little over six months."

"So you _know_ I'm not going to let it go." She switched lanes to get around a slowpoke.

"How close were you and your dad?" her uncle asked.

"We got along," Tami said. "I miss him."

"Was he a good father?"

"Sure. I mean…when he was home." Tami had been the apple of his eye. "Why? You had a falling out with _him_?"

Uncle Raymond nodded. "And let's leave it at that."

All those years of dinner time fights began to make more sense to Tami. So did her father's late hours, which didn't seem to be reflected in overtime pay. "Did he cheat on my mom?"

Uncle Raymond bit his bottom lip, looked out the window, and said nothing.

"I'll take that as a yes." Tami wasn't sure if it was sadness or anger sweeping over her.

"I understood your mother's choice to stay with him. She didn't have a lot of options, but… I just couldn't stand to be around him. " He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you that. You're just a kid."

"I'm not a kid. I'm 17."

"Maybe you're not a kid," Uncle Raymond said sadly, "but you should have had a chance to be one a little longer."

Tami was kind to her mother over Christmas. The distance between them was not repaired, but she saw her mother in a more sympathetic light. It was a pleasant Christmas, and Tami was especially glad to see her little sister, who had missed her terribly.

Even so, Tami wasn't unhappy when it was time to head back to North Dillon. Shelley said, "I wish you didn't have to leave home," but Tami felt more like she was going home.

**[FNL]**

There couldn't be much for Eric to do after football season, but he still hung out in the coaches' office every afternoon. Tami thought maybe he did it because he knew she would stop by looking for a ride on Tuesdays. On one of those rides home, Eric told her that Mo was cheating on her: "Sometimes, when we were at the away games….there'd be this girl….. and….well…I just thought you should know."

"So you waited until the football season was over to tell me? What? You didn't want him to play badly when I broke up with him?"

"No, I just….I didn't know if it was my place to say."

"But _now_ it's suddenly your place?" She wasn't angry at him, not really. She thought maybe he was only saying it now because his feelings for her had grown deeper.

"I'm sorry that you had to find out this way. Mo's a jerk anyway."

"No he's not, Eric. He's a nice guy."

"How is cheating on you nice?"

She shook her head. "Well, _that's_ not."

"Why don't you seem more upset?"

She _should_ be upset, shouldn't she? Mo was her boyfriend after all. But the truth was, she'd never envisioned the relationship lasting past high school. "I guess maybe I sort of knew already."

"Well, you deserve better than him." Eric was parked outside Uncle Raymond's house now, along the curb. He let his pick-up idle.

"Like who?"

He turned his head slowly to hers and looked into her eyes. "Whoever you want."

He couldn't have thrown up a clearer green light. "Yeah?" she asked with a teasing smile. She leaned forward and kissed him.

His mouth was soft and warm and she was sure he parted his lips for her, but when she thrust her tongue inside he pulled back so abruptly that his head hit the window. "What are you doing?" he exclaimed as his hand flew to the back of his head.

"I thought you wanted…." She trailed off in confusion.

"Tami, you're a beautiful girl. And I like you, I do. You're sweet."

_Sweet?_ Tami wasn't _sweet_. A little _sister_ was sweet.

"Listen," he said. "You're a student."

"So are _you_."

"I mean, you're a _high school_ student. It wouldn't be appropriate."

"Why wouldn't it be appropriate? You're 19. I'm 17. 17 is the legal age of consent." She flushed red. "Not that I'm consenting to anything!"

"Tami, I _work_ In the school where you're a student."

"Jesus! Just say you're not attracted to me if that's what you mean!"

"I…I like you. I like spending time with you. I hope we can be friends."

"Is it _appropriate _for you to be friends with a mere_ student_?" The anger and sarcasm overcame the humiliation in her voice.

"Tami – "

"Bye, _Coach Taylor_," she said as she got out of his truck. "Thanks for the ride, _Coach Taylor_."

"Tami –" he called again, but she'd already slammed the door.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

When Josh had left Dean Taylor's office, she called the rest of the admissions committee to cancel the panel interview. The young man had been given the interview he wanted, only he was the one who had posed most of the questions.

As soon as Tami put the phone down, it rang.

"Hey, babe," came Eric's deep voice. The sound of it could still give her a little shiver sometimes, but not this afternoon. She was experiencing a different rush of energy right now, half happiness, half anxiety. "Listen," he said, "I set up Gracie with a little sleepover tonight with the Lancaster girl. At _their_ house."

"On a Wednesday night? She has school tomorrow, honey."

"It's just preschool, Tami. What, you're afraid she's not going to be on her game for coloring caterpillars?"

Tami was distracted by thoughts of Josh and wondering how she was going to tell Eric. "I guess it's all right," she muttered.

He lowered his voice a little, and talked in that slow drawl, the way he did when he was trying to get laid. "I went by the gourmet counter at the grocery store, and I'm going to heat up a really nice dinner for us. I picked up that expensive cabernet you like."

She couldn't keep Josh's visit from Eric. She would have to tell him tonight. It wasn't going to be quite the sexy evening he hoped. She sighed.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his slow drawl gone and irritation speeding up his words. "I thought you'd be glad I made a little effort here, even during football season. I don't usually do this sort of thing in the middle of the season, but you've been stressed out, and I thought…I thought you'd be glad."

It was true. Football season often consumed his full attention, but matters had been milder in Philadelphia. He didn't have to make time for the politics of the sport anymore, because it was no longer something the town lived or died by. He was busy, of course, but he wasn't consumed. He still had the occasional problem with his players that had to be resolved, but the boosters were largely uninvolved, other than to write checks, the administration gave him free reign, and it wasn't as if the entire city of Philadelphia cared how he called his plays. No one questioned him, other than perhaps his assistant coaches. It had been a pleasant shift, although Tami could tell it had left Eric feeling a little adrift, as if he didn't quite know what to do after years of drama. He'd hated all the machinations, and yet he'd learned to live with them, and, maybe, on some level, all that conflict had made him feel important.

"I know," she said. "I appreciate it, sugar. I really do. I'm looking forward to it. Is Kim taking Gracie to preschool tomorrow then?"

"They're skipping tomorrow. She's taking them both to the zoo. She'll bring Gracie home Thursday evening."

"That's nice of her. See you soon, sugar?"

"I'll see you all right," he whispered.

She chuckled and hung up the phone. She'd tell him at dinner, after he'd had some wine, and he was relaxed.

Poor Eric. His plans of seduction always seemed to get interrupted by some unpredictable melodrama.

**[FNL]**

The afternoon that Tami Hayes tried to kiss Eric Taylor, she came into the house to find her uncle standing by the bay window.

"Was that Eric Taylor?" he asked. Uncle Raymond wasn't usually home this time of day, but his hours were unpredictable.

She threw herself down onto the couch. Had he seen her kiss him? "Yeah," she muttered.

The minister was looking back out the window and watching Eric's truck drive away.

"Mo's cheating on me," she said, because it seemed easy just to announce these kinds of things to Uncle Raymond. He never made her feel awkward or _bad_, the way her mother sometimes did.

He sat down in the arm chair next to her and crossed his legs. "And how does that make you feel?"

"Like shit!" she screamed, even though it was actually Eric's rejection that was making her feel that way. She felt bad after she screamed it. Uncle Raymond had never been anything but nice and helpful to her, and he didn't like swearing. It made him wince.

Still, his tone didn't shift. "But you don't seem _surprised_."

She shrugged. "I'm never surprised when a guy spits me out. They always do, sooner or later." At least Eric had had the courtesy to do it _before_ he'd had sex with her. Not that she'd gone all the way with Mo. And maybe that's why he had cheated on her - because she didn't put out. Guys were just assholes, that's all there was to it.

"Not all guys are jerks," her uncle said. "And some of these teenage boys who are doing careless, hurtful things now…they'll grow up. And when we grow up, we could _all_ use a little grace about our pasts."

Tami stiffened. Uncle Raymond had never before mentioned the pregnancy or the adoption, but there was no missing the message in those words, even if it didn't come from his sermon notes and include a reference to scripture.

"Eric's a hard worker," he said. "He's a fine, responsible young man. I suspected you might grow to like him. "

"Don't worry about it," Tami muttered, "He doesn't like me."

"Oh I very much doubt that."

Tami looked at him quizzically.

"I couldn't help but notice that you kissed him." Uncle Raymond said it as though he was merely observing the weather.

She shrugged. "Well he didn't like it."

Uncle Raymond chuckled.

"He didn't!"

Uncle Raymond kicked off his shoes. "He's a bit of a tender wound, that boy. He told you about Cindy, I suppose?"

"His ex-girlfriend? Not much."

"They were engaged."

Tami hadn't known that part. Despite their many conversations, Eric had always steered clear of the topic of Cindy.

"She broke it off unexpectedly." Uncle Raymond lined up his shoes neatly beside the couch. "And then she moved out of town. Didn't give him much of an explanation other than that she wanted to _find herself_. Said Eric was holding her back. So Eric…I'm guessing Eric's not in any hurry to put his heart on the line again. You might consider that and not take his reluctance so personally." He stood up. "Chicken okay for dinner?"

**[FNL]**

I-95 was down to just one lane and Dean Taylor still had seven miles to go. The Taylors couldn't live near Braemore. That would have meant either living in a three-bedroom town house next to another town house packed with seven loud college kids, or living in a million dollar home. There was nothing in between. So they'd chosen to live in the suburbs.

Tami took in a deep breath and turned off the traffic report, which was not helping to ease her anxiety any. She put her car in park. Nobody was moving at the moment. She wondered how Eric was going to react to this news. She wondered how often he'd thought of the adoption over the years. If he did, he never talked to her about it. They'd long ago agreed they would never tell their children.

A car honked behind her. She threw her car into drive and began to move.

**[FNL]**

Tami avoided Eric after her botched pass at him. One evening, a week after the humiliating incident, Uncle Raymond came home from church and tossed his Bible and car keys on the kitchen table. Tami looked up from her Algebra II homework.

"Thought we'd order pizza tonight," he said.

"Sounds good. Neither of us took out anything to thaw last night."

"By the way, I invited Eric Taylor to join us. He needs a reference letter from me to take with him when he leaves in four months. Thought he might as well stay for dinner after he picks it up."

"Why would you _do_ that to me?" Tami exclaimed.

Uncle Raymond only chuckled and poured himself a glass of sweet tea.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

It was after six when Dean Taylor got home to their Philadelphia rambler, and Eric greeted her at the door. He took her coat, like they were dining at a fancy establishment. She smiled weakly and kicked off her high heels in the foyer.

When they got into the kitchen, she saw that he'd even gone so far as to dim the overhead lights and set out a pair of candles.

They were both quite hungry, so they didn't talk much through dinner, other than for Tami to say, "This is really good" and for him to say, "I thought you'd like it."

There was nothing uncomfortable in the silence between them, and yet, maybe because of what had happened today, it reminded her of that other awkward dinner so many years ago…

**[FNL]**

Uncle Raymond and Eric talked over the pizza, but Tami stayed out of the conversation. Afterwards, they all went to sit on the back porch, lit the patio heater to ward off the late January chill, and sat in the three rocking chairs, Eric with a beer and Tami and her uncle with glasses of sweet tea.

Eric pushed off the porch. Tami knew because she was looking at his feet instead of his face. "Big news," he said. "I'm gonna be an uncle."

"Congratulations!" Uncle Raymond offered.

Eric shrugged. "I think it's a bit young to be having a kid, but…."

"They're twenty-three," Uncle Raymond said. "And they both have jobs."

"I know," Eric replied. "I just think I'd want to wait until I was closer to thirty, you know? Have a lot of money saved up before I had a kid. Just seems more responsible."

"There's nothing irresponsible about what they're doing," Uncle Raymond told him.

"I didn't say it was _irresponsible_," Eric insisted. "I mean, it's not like they're sixteen and unmarried."

Uncle Raymond tapped the arm of his rocking chair anxiously, glanced at Tami, and then looked beyond her at the weeds in the far corner of the yard.

"Yeah," Tami said, making her first contribution of the evening. "That's pretty irresponsible. What would you think of someone who did that?"

"Phone's ringing," Eric said, jerking his head toward the screen door.

Uncle Raymond went inside.

It seemed Eric had forgotten her question. The creak of the rocking chairs was loud and moths gathered around the porch light. Despite the heater, Tami felt a chill through her thick A&M sweatshirt. A&M was one of ten schools she was applying to. Shot-gun approach.

The silence was painful, and she was relieved when her uncle popped back out, but he didn't sit down. He held the screen door open as he spoke. "I've got to run out for a bit. Old man Johnson is dying again."

"Again?" Eric laughed. "What do you mean again?"

Old man Johnson was dying once a week. It had become a joke in Uncle Raymond's house. Tami's uncle would drive out, say a prayer over the man, and talk to him for half an hour, and the next day, he'd be miraculously healed. "Ah," Uncle Raymond said, "I think he's just a bit lonely. I'll be back in an hour or so. There's another beer still left if you want to finish it before you go, Eric."

The screen door shut. Silence descended again. Tami drained the rest of her sweet tea and set it down on the porch.

"So…" Eric said finally. He rested his beer on his knee and turned the can. " think I gave you the wrong impression."

"I was the one who had the wrong impression," Tami replied. "I thought you were flirting with me. I misread. It's cool."

"Well…I…I may have actually been flirting with you."

She pulled her legs up in the rocking chair and crisscrossed them. "I don't get it."

"It's just that I've got a lot going on."

"Fine."

"And I think…you know…I'm going to A&M in four months. You may be, you may not be. And if you're not…you know…probably no reason to get started now. Because…college…you just find someone else."

"Do you?"

"I….people do. Hell, Cindy found someone else when we were still in the same town together. We were supposed to get _married_. But she just…." He shook his head and frowned down at his beer can. "Wrote me a letter."

"She broke it off in a _letter?_"

"She didn't _say_ there was someone else. But there had to be, right?"

"Someone better than _you_?" Tami asked incredulously.

He smiled. "Thanks for that." He drained the rest of the beer can and set it down on the porch beside his chair. "When Cindy left, Maria told me, _If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you_ – I don't remember."

"If it comes back to you," Tami said, "it's yours forever. If it doesn't, it was never meant to be."

"Yeah, that's it."

"Are you still waiting for her to come back to you?"

"Nah. I think I'm done waiting. Haven't heard from her since she left. Don't even know where she is. I guess I didn't live up to her expectations."

"What did she _expect_?"

"I didn't live up to anyone's expectations," he said, ignoring the question. "And the truth is…I may not make it onto the Aggies as a walk-on. My arm still hurts sometimes. I'm not as good as I used to be. Truth is, I put my odds of making the team at about 30 percent."

She smiled. It was a rather specific calculation.

"And even if I make the team," he continued, "I put my odds of being drafted to the NFL at about 0.05%."

"Well, at least you'll have a college degree. You'll be the first in your family, right?"

He nodded. "You too, huh?"

"Yeah. Don't know what kind of degree, though. Some third tier university, probably."

"You can always do what I did. Two years of community college and then transfer. Impress the hell out of them your first two years. And it'll save you money." He had a point. Even if she got into A&M or some other such university, she didn't have a way to pay for it. She'd started a part-time job waitressing, but she hadn't saved much. And if she stayed in North Dillon, Uncle Raymond would probably let her live with him rent free. "But who knows," he continued. "You might get in where you want your first time around. You did good on your SATs, right? Your GPA is up now. It was just that one year you blew it."

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The memory of the aftermath of the birth and adoption weighed heavily on her heart.

"What happened that year, anyway?"

"I had a baby," Tami blurted out. She wasn't sure why she said it, and once it was out, there was no taking it back. "I put it up for adoption."

Eric had been absently bouncing his leg up and down, but now the limb grew instantly still. His rocking chair stopped creaking back and forth. He reached down and fumbled to pick up his beer can, even though it was empty.

Tami wanted to cry, but she didn't. "I bet you're _really_ glad you didn't kiss me back now."

Eric sipped from his empty can. Air whistled around the rim.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

When the plates were cleared to the sink and nothing but a bottle of wine sat on the table between them, Eric said, "Something kind of unexpected happened to me today."

"Really?" This might be a good segue into the sudden appearance of her son. "Me too. You first."

"You know how I had a girlfriend before I met you?"

"You mean a fiancé? Cindy?"

"Yeah. Anyway, she sent me a friend request on Facebook today." Eric had mocked Facebook for years, but when they moved to Philadelphia, he finally opened an account. He thought it might help him keep up with Julie and with his boys from Texas.

"Really? And did you accept?"

"I figured I'd better ask how you felt first."

"Do you _want_ to accept? I mean, she did rip out your heart, throw it on the ground, and disappear without another word."

"I know. But I'm kind of curious what happened to her. "

"Did you look at her profile?"

"What I could see of it without accepting her request. She's a graduate of Oklahoma University, with a B.A. is in accounting. She works at some CPA firm in Pittsburgh – "

"- That's nearby," Tami said, suddenly feeling a little less casual about the whole thing.

"And she's divorced."

"Surprise, surprise."

"So, are you okay if I accept?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay? I'm not the jealous type, Eric."

He reached for the wine bottle and refilled their glasses.

"Your Facebook password," she asked, "it's still Julie47, right?"

He chuckled and she smiled.

"So," he asked leaning back in his chair. "What's your unexpected thing? "

**[FNL]**

"Listen," seventeen-year-old Tami said, shattering the silence between them, "I don't know why I told you. No one in this town knows except my Uncle Raymond. I came here to get a new start, and I got one. So please don't tell anybody."

"I promise. I won't."

"Thanks." She pulled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The moon was huge tonight, a giant, irregular ball in the sky. It was worth remarking on, but they weren't having a friendly conversation. "I guess you want to get going now," she said.

He didn't leave. He began rocking again. A minute of silence past, and he said, "You're a very honest sort of person."

She turned her head to look at him.

He bent the tab of his beer can back and forth. "Cindy…I never had any idea what she was thinking. I thought I did, but clearly I didn't. She kept all sorts of things from me. How she was feeling. What she wanted. So it was just so sudden, you know?" The tab broke off. He pushed it inside the can. "I feel like _you_ wouldn't do that to a guy."

Why was he complimenting her? Hadn't he just heard what she said? "I had a baby," she reminded him. "I was sixteen. I put it up for adoption."

"It would have been easier for you to abort it, wouldn't it?"

"I tried. It wasn't easier. I walked out."

"It took a lot of courage, what you did." He turned his eyes toward her now. They were soft, slightly damp pools of a dozen colors in the glow of the porch light. "Cindy and I waited a while. We dated our whole sophomore year first, but we were still only sixteen, the first time we did it."

They really had been together for a long time, Tami thought. What must it be like, to have one girlfriend for years, to be ready to marry her, and then just have her walk away?

"I don't know what I'd of done," he continued, "at sixteen, If she'd gotten pregnant. I mean, I'd of stepped up, but I don't know _how_ I'd of done it. What did your boyfriend do? The one who got you pregnant?"

"He wasn't even really my boyfriend." Tami felt like the word "slut" was emblazoned across her chest as she admitted these things to him. "I knew him from around school, but we weren't close or anything. We made out at the party, and he kind of ushered me into one of the bedrooms, and he was two years older, and I didn't want him to think I was totally inexperienced. I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to like me. I was a fool. I thought it meant something. But the next day he just acted like nothing happened. Like he didn't even know me."

"Asshole," Eric muttered. "But you told him, right?"

"Yeah, I told him. He said it wasn't his, but it had to be. I was a virgin. My first time and I got pregnant. What are the odds?"

"Didn't you use something?"

"I was stupid. He promised me he'd pull out."

"So," Eric asked, "did you get a paternity test?"

"No. He offered me money for an abortion, and I took it. When I decided not to have the abortion I told him, and he said he'd done his part, that I was on my own. We never spoke again after that."

"How did your mom take it?"

Tami slid her legs down and rested her feet on the porch again. "Better than I expected, actually."

"My dad would have slapped me six ways to Sunday. I mean…if I'd of gotten a girl pregnant."

"Wish _his_ dad felt that way."

They were quiet for a while. "Want another beer?" she asked.

He answered in the affirmative, so she went to retrieve one. When she rejoined him on the porch, he was leaning over the railing. "Some moon," he said as he turned to receive the beer. He cracked it open and leaned back against the rail. She hoisted herself up and sat on the railing beside him. "So…you don't despise me?" she asked. "You know, you saying it would be irresponsible and all that?"

"Well, it _was_ irresponsible," he said. "Having sex with some guy you hardly knew, not using any protection. But I think you _know_ that."

She bit her bottom lip. "Yeah," she muttered.

"But no, of course I don't despise you. You…you're a tough girl, Tami Hayes. And a smart one too. And sweet."

She groaned.

"What?"

"I don't want to be _sweet_."

"Why? It's hard to be both tough _and_ sweet at the same time. And the world could use a little more sweetness. God knows I could." He put his beer down on the railing and turned to face her. He put a hand on either side of her legs against the railing, so that his body was almost touching hers. "Did I completely blow my chance?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"The other night? When you kissed me."

Her cheeks warmed with the memory of that humiliation. But when she realized what he was asking, she smiled. "Not _completely_."

"I just wasn't expecting it. And I wasn't quite ready to move on."

"But a week later and you are?" A week later and after finding out she was stupid enough to get herself knocked up? "I'm not _easy_ you know, if that's why you're suddenly interested. I'm not that person anymore. I know who I am now."

"You found yourself."

She laughed a little. Then she felt bad, remembering what Uncle Raymond had told her, that Cindy told Eric she was leaving him to _find herself_. "Yeah," she said. "I have. I know what I want now."

"What's that?" he asked.

"A college education. A career of some kind. Self-respect. And…" She looked him straight in the eyes and took the risk. "Someone like you."

That was when he kissed her.

It was a little like a fairy tale, that kiss. Tami didn't think she could ever forget that sensation, but she did forget it. And forgetting was fine, because what eclipsed it was over twenty years of loving Eric Taylor, thousands of other kisses, nights of passionate sex and nights of tender sex, nights of simply fooling around, laughter and tears, a hundred fights and two children.

Two children, together.

And the one child, somewhere, she'd given birth to alone.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

Eric topped off Tami's wine glass. "I don't understand how he could have unsealed those records. "

"I told you," she said. "He applied to have them unsealed and he has a friend in the court system who was pulling for him."

"Did he offer any _proof_ he was your son?"

"He showed me a photocopy of the birth record. And, sugar, he looks like me."

Eric sighed. "It doesn't sound right. Did he ask you for money?"

"No, he didn't ask me for money!" Then, with less irritation, she said, "I'm meeting him for lunch tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Why? Because he's my son. He wants to know things. _I_ want to know things."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea. That chapter's closed. You have children you raised from day one, and neither of them knows anything about this. We _agreed_ they never would. I don't know if I want some kid blowing into our lives - "

"- Eric, I never stopped thinking about him."

He bit his bottom lip and swallowed. "He's not any part of our life, Tami."

"He's part of _me_."

Eric took a long sip of wine and then set his glass down. "A'ight. If that's what you want. If you want to go to lunch with him, go. I guess I just don't like to think about it."

"You mean think about what a slut I once was?"

"I _never_ said that. Tami! Really? You're gonna put words in my mouth?"

She cast her eyes down at the table.

"I never put that burden on you, babe. I never tried to make you feel like that."

"I know." She met his eyes again.

"That was a long time ago. Damn, Tami, that was a different life. We have a life. I just don't want this kid to disrupt it."

"This kid has a _name_. It's Josh."

Eric smiled. "Remember you told me you wanted to name him Taylor? He'd of been Taylor Taylor when you married me."

"You wouldn't even have dated me," she said, "if I had been a single mother when we met."

"You don't know that."

"_You_ know that."

"You made the right decision, Tami. Not just for you. For _him_." He stood and came over and squatted down in front of her. He put a hand on her hip. "You did the right thing. You don't have to defend yourself to anyone. Not even to him. A'ight?" She nodded and he kissed her cheek as he stood. "Let's cork this bottle and go to bed."

He wanted to make love, but she didn't feel like it. She lay with her head on his chest while he stared up at the ceiling and slowly stroked her hair.

"If this turns into a relationship," she said, "we're going to have to discuss telling the girls."

He tensed. "You want to have lunch with the kid, talk, I understand. Have lunch with the kid. It's just lunch. "

Tami raised her head up. "Maybe it will be just this one lunch. But maybe it won't."

"Are you hoping it will be more?"

"I don't know what I'm hoping," she admitted.

He pressed his forehead to hers. She could feel the fear rolling off him, like a wave. But his words were braver: "Whatever you're hoping or feeling, I'm here. You know that right? I'm here, and I love you."

"I love you too."

Their lips met and the kiss deepened. His hand slid slowly from her hair to her breasts, which he fondled gently through the thin, white fabric of her t-shirt. She responded to his touch with a murmur.

"Change your mind?" he asked.

"Just keep kissing me and we'll see where it goes."

It went all the way, of course. He was slow and tender with her tonight. All gentle intensity. No fooling around.

Later, when they were spooned together, she assured him, "This isn't going to change us you know. This kid coming into my life, it won't change us. Nothing will ever change us."

**[Two Weeks Later]**

"Why do they never serve beer at a math party?" Josh asked Tami.

She smiled at him over the table. They were eating lunch at a Mexican resteraunt half way between the school where he taught and Braemore. Over the past two weeks, they'd already tried Thai, Italian, and Japanese together. Tami loved the diversity of cuisine available in Philadelphia. "I don't know. Why?"

"Because you can't drink and derive."

Tami laughed. Josh was corny, like Eric. Of course, Josh wasn't _Eric's_ son. She had to remember that. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that she'd had a life before Eric. And in his interest for math, Josh was nothing like Eric, or like her for that matter. She'd nearly failed Geometry her junior year, and she'd had all that Algebra II tutoring her senior year – followed by rides home courtesy of Eric. She smiled at the recollection.

"Sorry," Josh said. "I have a hundred of those."

"Tell me another one," she insisted. She wondered if Julie would roll her eyes at her half-brother's jokes. Tami hadn't talked to Eric about introducing Josh to Julie, because he had tensed the first time she mentioned the possibility. But they had to have the discussion soon. First, Eric would have to meet Josh. Then they'd have to consider whether they could tell Julie without telling Gracie. Tami wasn't thrilled with the idea of revealing her past irresponsibility to either of her daughters, but there was only one who still lived under her roof, only one who might still take her advice about sex.

"Listen, what can you tell me about my dad?" Josh asked suddenly.

"I don't know what to tell you," Tami answered honestly. "His name is John, but you know that from the birth certificate. He's probably 42 now. He was good-looking. And he played the drums." John had been into music. Maybe that was where Josh got his math sense? It certainly wasn't from her.

When the bill came, Josh grabbed it, but Tami tugged too. "You paid the last three times," Josh insisted. "It's my turn."

Tami had given this kid up and walked away from him forever. She could buy him a fourth lunch. "No," she insisted. "Let me."

**[FNL]**

Eric glanced at his watch and paused the game tape. No wonder he was hungry. He'd forgotten to eat, and he didn't have time to do it before his government class.

He grabbed his brown lunch bag out of the mini-fridge and made his way from the coaches' office to the classroom. When he got in, he locked the door, sat at the desk, and devoured his sandwich before washing it down with unsweetened ice tea. Tami had made him stop drinking sweet tea. She'd told him he was getting too old just to work off all those extra calories. A woman could say things like that to a man and get away with it.

The door knob giggled a few times, but the kids got the message eventually. He thought of Tami, who was meeting Josh for lunch again today for the fourth time. He didn't know what bothered him so much about their budding relationship. Maybe it was the fact that there was something Tami didn't share with him. Not just _something_. A child. A young man she might grow to love, who was half hers and half some other man's.

A face peered through the slender window in the door. Eric hastily brushed his crumbs into the trash can and unlocked the door. "Come on in, ladies and gentlemen," he announced to the line of kids who were sitting against the wall outside the door.

He knew he wasn't going to be able to concentrate on teaching today, so after he'd taken roll, he started handing out little books that contained the Constitution. "Read this from cover to cover," he said. "I want y'all to write a one-sentence summary of each amendment to the constitution."

"_All_ of them?" a boy moaned.

"All of them," Eric barked.

"Aren't we going to have class discussion today?" a girl whined.

"Well," he said, pointing to his forehead, "you need some information in your brain before you can have a useful discussion. I know you children of the internet age think you can just debate anything at any time with anyone, but you can't. "

"So what's the sixteenth amendment, Coach Taylor?" Marcus Hamilton asked smugly from the back of the class.

Eric knew the 15th amendment gave blacks the right to vote. He knew the 19th gave women the right to vote. But he was kind of fuzzy on the amendments in-between. He hadn't ever taught government before. Principal White thought since he had a history minor, and since he wanted to make as much as he'd been making in Texas, she'd just hand three government classes to him.

"You expect me to do your work for you?" he barked. "Open the book and _read_, son."

Coach Taylor sat down at his desk, opened his laptop, and logged onto his school e-mail. The first message was from a parent of one of his players, asking why the kid didn't get more play time. He typed in reply, "Because your constant protective hovering has made him weaker than other boys his age."

It was cathartic to type that sentence, but he promptly deleted it and wrote instead, "I assure you that Anthony gets valuable training in both character and physical skills on my practice field, and as his talents improve, he will earn more play time."

The next message was from Cindy Waters, his old high school girlfriend and one-time fiancé. He wasn't sure how she'd gotten this e-mail address. He glanced around the room before opening the message.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

Cindy wrote that she'd gotten Eric's address from his Facebook profile, though he didn't remember putting it there. Her e-mail was a long, heartfelt apology for the way she'd misused him:

"I've matured a great deal since I was nineteen, and I realize how unfair I was to you. There was so much I should have told you so much sooner, so much I was thinking and feeling, and instead I led you on. I accepted your proposal even though I was having doubts about our relationship. That was wrong of me, and I know I wounded you. I'm glad to see you went on to find someone else to marry. I'm glad you found the right person. I wish I could say the same for myself."

He felt a little guilty about the self-satisfaction that arose within him when he read those words. Cindy's life hadn't been all puppy dogs and rainbows without him, whatever she had imagined it would be when she left. She was right. She _had_ misused him. Maybe he should tell her _just how much_. Just how lost and angry and confused her leaving had made him. Just how incredibly unfair it was. And how Tami was ten times better in bed than she was, thank you very much.

In the end, though, he wrote a two-word reply: "Apology accepted."

She must have been at her e-mail right then, because within a minute, he had a reply: "Thank you for accepting my apology. You always were a gracious guy."

To that, he replied, "I hope you found yourself." He didn't mean to come off as angry and sarcastic. He _half_ meant it. He _half_ wished her well. He'd cared about her once, deeply.

Eric went through the rest of his e-mails, replying where necessary, and was about to shut it down when he saw that Cindy had replied again. "That was such a silly idea of mine," she wrote. "I don't even know what I meant when I said that. I don't know if I ever found myself, but I went to college after all, and I got a degree, and I've been really successful at my job. Last year, they made me a partner in my accounting firm. I think my husband was jealous of my success, and that contributed to the divorce."

To that, he responded, "My wife is very successful. She's the Dean of Admissions at Braemore college. I would never begrudge her that success."

_See how much of a better husband I am than the guy you picked?_

After he sent it, he felt a little guilty, since the truth was that he hadn't exactly encouraged Tami when she first got the offer.

This time, he waited. When he heard the soft chime of new mail, he opened Cindy's message.

"Of course you wouldn't begrudge her. You were always such a supportive boyfriend. You could be that way because you were confident without being cocky. That was one of the sexiest things about you."

He shut the screen of his laptop abruptly, as though someone might have seen. Of course no one had seen. The kids were hunched over their Constitutions, or at least over their cellphones hidden between the covers of their Constitutions.

He eased the screen of his laptop back up and read the message again. He had to admit, it made him feel good, especially now, when it seemed he was being pushed a little out of Tami's life. Josh-Josh-Josh. Every bedtime conversation was about Josh. Josh got a great job as a math teacher in Philadelphia. Josh might go back and get his Ph.D. in math one day. Josh was captain of the math club in high school. Josh just bought a new car. Josh this and Josh that. Josh. Josh. Josh.

What about _Eric_?

He read the message a third time, and then he typed, "Yeah? What else did you think was sexy about me?"

He looked at the line he'd just typed.

_You're a moron_, he told himself.

He promptly deleted the words. Instead, he typed, "I don't mean to be rude, but this is my work e-mail you've been writing to. I shouldn't be receiving personal e-mails on this account."

Then he shot off an e-mail to Tami: "Hope your day is going well. Just wanted to say I love you."

He shut his laptop, stood up, and announced. "Y'all, sorry I was being lazy about teaching this morning. Let's have ourselves a little discussion." He pointed to Marcus at the back of the class. "Income tax!" He was proud of himself for suddenly remembering.

"What?" Marcus asked.

"The 16th amendment allowed Congress to levy an income tax. Let's talk about that."

**[FNL]**

"So today I gave Josh a full family health history," Tami was saying as Eric lay on his back, hands crossed over his stomach, starring up at the ceiling. She was sitting up against the headboard. One lamp, the lamp on her side of the bed, was still on. "Do you know one of his favorite movies is _Foul Play_? Isn't that a weird coincidence? I mean, you wouldn't even think a kid his age has ever seen that movie. Well, Julie's seen it, but only because I made her watch it. But isn't that amazing, that we both have one of the same favorite movies? Oh, and you know what else he told me today? He said – "

"- Cindy e-mailed me today to tell me she thinks I'm sexy."

"_**What?" **_Tami's hair bounced with the force of her turning head. "She just wrote you an e-mail completely out of the blue that said, _I think you're sexy_?"

"More or less."

"No," Tami said. "No. She didn't do it out of the blue. There's a context. I want the context."

He pulled himself up into a sitting positon next to her. "There's not much of a context, really. We were writing back and forth – "

"- Writing back and forth! Yeah! That's the _context_, Eric. What did you _say_ to her?"

"I thought you said you weren't the jealous type?"

She looked directly in his eyes. "Give. Me. The. Context."

He recounted his e-mail exchanges with Cindy. The ones he actually wrote. Not any of the ones he thought about writing.

"Hmmm….well at least you didn't give her much encouragement. She figured out she tossed away a good thing, I guess."

Eric smiled.

"What are you smiling about?"

Eric stopped smiling.

"You need to draw a clear line with her."

"I did."

"I hope so," Tami said, and slid down in bed and made a hrmphing sound.

"I told you what I wrote her."

"You didn't tell her she was being inappropriate, did you?"

"I don't think…I don't think that was really necessary. "

"Well if she keeps e-mailing you to tell you how sexy you are, you better tell me about it."

"A'ight."

"And don't go liking all her status updates on Facebook. That'll give her the wrong idea."

"I never like anyone's status updates." Sometimes, if someone posted a bit of news – like when Vince posted he'd made quarterback of the new super Panthers or when Luke posted that he had signed up for the military – he would pick up the phone and call and offer his congratulations and advice. But he didn't like clicking like.

Tami was quiet for a long time. He wondered if she was stewing over Cindy's forthrightness or suspecting him of further encouragement. He didn't really care which. At least she was preoccupied with _him_ for a change.

"Eric," she said, her voice a weird mix of soft concern and hard irritation, "what's going on with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"_You_ tell _me_. Clearly you're upset about something, and you're doing your little passive aggressive dance."

"Dance? I'm not doing any kind of dance. "

She sighed. She threw off the covers and stood up. "Get out of bed," she ordered.

"What?"

"Get out of bed, go open us a bottle of wine, and meet me in the living room. We're having this out."


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

Tami was leveling her eyes at him like an inquisitor, but he just kept sipping the wine. She waited, like a prosecutor ready to pounce. "I just want to hear you out, sweetheart. I just want to know what you're feeling," she said with her lips. _Tell your version to the court_, she said with her eyes.

He put his wine glass down on the coffee table and cleared his throat. "I don't like it."

"You don't like what?"

"I don't like you going on all these lunch dates with this kid who just suddenly shows up twenty-four years after you give him up for adoption. I don't like it. Those records were sealed. That's an invasion of your privacy. Of _our_ privacy. You don't owe him all these lunch dates."

"Maybe I _do_ owe him, Eric! Maybe I owe him a hell of a lot more. Maybe I've felt pretty guilty for a pretty long time about giving him up!"

"Damnit, Tami, you know it was the right thing to do. You _know_ that."

"Maybe. But maybe the right thing to do _now_ is to be a part of his life. He's lost his mother. She died, and he hasn't been very close to his father for years."

"He's a grown man."

"I don't understand why you're so upset about this. Can't you see my side of it? Can't you see why I might want this relationship?

He took his wine glass back up and swallowed the last ounce. He'd chugged it too quickly. He hissed and put it back down. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, of course. I'm sorry." He reached for the cork and began shoving it violently back in the bottle.

"Oh no you don't, Eric. Don't cork that bottle."

"I'm corking the damn bottle." He shoved the cork in deep.

"Take that cork out right now. You are not corking up tonight!"

It sounded so ridiculous, the unintentional metaphor. He started laughing. Then she started laughing. She put her wine glass on the table and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. "I love you, Eric. I _love_ you. Talk to me."

He nodded slowly and she drew her arms away and sat back against the arm of the couch in a listening pose.

"Okay," he said. "I guess I just feel kind of left out. I know it sounds childish. But it's how I feel. I feel….like…never mind."

"I'm listening, sugar. I'm not judging. I'm listening."

"I feel like Josh is the most important thing in the world to you right now, and your family isn't. Your real family. The one that….the one that's sitting right here." He jerked his head down the hallway. "And sleeping in that room over there."

"You think I've been _neglecting_ you?" she asked defensively. "Seriously?"

"You asked me to say how I felt, so I told you how I felt, and now you're jumping down my throat, which is what always happens, which is why I just wanted to cork the damn bottle!"

"It doesn't always happen," she insisted. She slid closer to him and put an arm around his waist and rested her chin on his shoulder. "I'm sorry if I let it happen this time. And I'm sorry if I made you feel like that. It's not true. You and our girls are the most important thing in this world to me. But I'd like to think that I'm important to you too."

"You _are_."

"And that because I'm important to you, you'll _understand_ how important Josh is to me."

"A'ight," he said softly. "You're right. I'm being selfish. You're right. As usual."

She sighed, drew her chin away from him, and slid her hand from his waist up to the back of his neck, where she toyed with his thick hair. "I think it's time you met him. I don't want you to feel like you're excluded from any part of my life."

"I don't think that's a good idea. I'm nothing to him. What would we even talk about?"

"Football?"

"You said he never played."

"True," she admitted.

"Is he a fan?" Eric asked.

"I don't know. We haven't really talked about football."

Eric spread his hands wide in a gesture of hopelessness.

"You'll find something to talk about," she insisted. "Come to our next lunch date."

"I can't. I can't just duck out in the middle of the school day the way he apparently can. My lunch is only twenty minutes, and I can't skip a planning period during football season. "

"Then let's all go out to dinner one night. Get a baby sitter for Gracie and go out."

Eric leaned forward, his hands laced together. "It'll be weird."

"No more weird than it was for me the first time, I assure you."

He thought for a moment. "A'ight," he said finally. "But not on Thursday before the game. And not on Saturday after. Saturdays are for _us_. Make it a Wednesday. And I'm sorry I've been an ass."

"You know what?" she asked.

"What?"

"Cindy isn't the only woman who thinks you're sexy."

He laughed. "Is that so?"

"Mhmmm…." she murmured as she nibbled his ear.

He closed his eyes and rested his head back on the couch while she continued her playful assault, this time moving to his neck.

"God, Tami," he muttered. "You're pretty damn sexy yourself."

**[FNL]**

"How do I look?" Eric asked, standing tall and straightening the tail end of his burgundy button-down shirt over his khaki pants and glancing at himself sideways in the bedroom mirror. The babysitter had just rung the doorbell.

"You look fine," Tami said with a sputtered laugh. "Why do you care how you look? Josh is a guy. He's not going to care how you look."

"I'm trying to look good for _you_."

"Like hell you are. You never worry about looking good for me."

"Sure I do, babe," he insisted, drawing her back against himself and kissing her neck. "I spend hours beautifying myself just for you."

She giggled. "Get the door."

**[FNL]**

"So….uh…." Eric said, reaching for his water glass across the white-clothed table. They were eating at a moderately priced Italian restaurant. "Tami tells me you never played football. What sport _did_ you play in high school?"

Josh smiled, Eric thought, a little smugly. "Oh," the young man answered, "I was never on any sports team."

"Ever?" Eric asked. "Well, what about little league?"

In Texas, boys played sports all year long. You had your main sport – which for Eric was of course football - and then you had your secondary sport - which for Eric had been baseball. For his big brother, it had been the reverse, and Bobby had also played a third sport - basketball. Billy Riggins, Eric knew, had played both golf and football in high school, and Buddy Garrity had been on both the football and wrestling teams. You didn't grow up in Texas and not play sports. You just didn't.

"Nah. Never was on a baseball team," Josh said.

"Soccer?" Even Julie, his non-sports daughter, had played soccer for four years in a community league, from 3rd through 6th grade, before she abruptly quit and refused to try out for the junior high team.

Josh laughed and shook his head. "I'm more of a math guy than a sports guy."

The kid didn't have much of a Texas accent either. "So…you didn't grow up in Texas?"

"My parents moved to the east coast when I was four."

"So, as a math guy...I guess you'd be good at sports stats."

"I suppose," Josh replied, "if I had any interest in them."

Eric sipped his water and looked around at the restaurant. "Sure is taking a long time."

"We ordered five minutes ago, sugar," Tami assured him. "Eric, tell Josh about teaching government. You're _both_ teachers."

Eric returned his attention back to Josh. "I teach government," he said. "Three classes."

"I teach math," Josh replied. "Six classes."

"My daughter wants to be an English professor one day," Eric said, and then promptly bit his tongue. He'd just been trying to make conversation with the kid, but he certainly didn't want to discuss his daughters with the young man. Julie didn't even know he existed.

"Yeah, Tami told me you two had two daughters," Josh said. "It's weird to think I have half-sisters. I'd love to meet them soon."

Eric picked up his knife and turned it over. "Well that's not going to happen."

"Oh," Josh said, and looked from Tami to Eric and back to Tami. "Tami told me maybe –"

Tami shook her head at Josh, and he fell silent. Eric glared at Tami. Josh excused himself to go to the bathroom. Eric leaned forward across the table. "What the hell did you tell him?"

"I told him _maybe_. And _someday_. And we'd _see_. I told him I had to discuss it with you first."

"We _agreed_. We agreed they would _never_ know."

"That's when we thought the records were sealed," she hissed. "That was before I met him."

"And how are you going to tell – how are you gonna tell Gracie not to - "

"- Be a slut like her mother?"

"That is _not_ what I said."

"You're embarrassed by me. You're embarrassed by the person I once was."

"That's not true, Tami. I don't want the girls to know because they don't _need_ to know. And Gracie wouldn't even _understand_. And Julie might start to distrust us. And, yeah, okay, it'll also be a little uncomfortable when word gets around and judgy-judgy people start looking down their noses at you. But you're not going to like that either. It's got nothing to do with me being embarrassed _by_ you. And I'm sorry you think that. I'm a little hurt you think that. Because I have always had your back."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't being fair. But you're not being reasonable either. Frankly, I don't see how we can withhold this information from Julie at this point."

"Easy. The same we withheld it for the past nineteen years."

Eric pulled back from the table as the waiter approached. He sat stiffly as the man put the plates down. By the time the waiter was gone, Josh was on his way back to the table.

"Excuse me," Eric said as soon as Josh sat down. "I need to use the john too."

What he really needed to do was to wash his face in cold water and take a few deep breaths.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

"I don't think your husband likes me," Josh said when Eric was gone from the table.

"Oh, no, honey," Tami insisted. "Eric likes you just fine."

"I'm sorry…uh…" He waved a hand. "Look, I don't want to cause a problem for you."

"You're _not_ a problem for me, sweetheart."

"Well," he said, "at one time…I _was_."

It was the first time he'd ever said anything the slightest bit bitter about the adoption. How much resentment did he actually feel, Tami wondered? How deeply did he feel it?

When Eric rejoined them, he was a little calmer, and Tami observed that he was making a sincere effort to make conversation between bites, though he still wasn't finding much connection with Josh.

"You like history at all?" Eric tried. "I minored in history myself. "

"Can't say I've ever really been a history buff. It wasn't my best subject."

Tami's cellphone rang and she snatched it from her purse with irritation. She'd forgotten to turn it off before the meal. She went to silence it, but noticed the caller ID said Tyler, Texas. That was where her Uncle Raymond had moved a year and a half ago to help start a church plant.

Tami's uncle only called on Sunday afternoons. Never on a weekday evening. It wasn't his number, but who else could be calling from Tyler? And why would he call off-schedule? "Sorry to be rude, but I think I better take this," she said, and answered, "Hello?" as she walked from the table.

**[FNL]**

Eric unbuttoned the top button of his button-down. It felt a little tight. What the hell should he say to this kid? "I wasn't too shabby at math," he said finally. "But I never took anything past trigonometry. Geometry comes in handy sometimes, in football."

"I really would like to meet my sisters," Josh said. His tone had shifted. He was talking in a tight, rapid fire. "But I get the strong impression you don't ever want me to and that might be a bone of contention between you and Tami."

"Uh…" Eric replied, "I just don't think it's a good idea right now, but Tami and I will discuss it."

"Well, Julie I understand is 19. She's an adult and you can't control who she sees. I didn't have any problem locating Tami, and I'm sure I won't have any trouble locating Julie. I'm good at the sort of the thing."

Eric pushed his plate aside and leaned forward. "Now you listen here. You will not talk to her without our permission."

Josh leaned back, rested one hand on the table, and surveyed him. "You really don't want her to know, do you? What's it worth to you, not to have her know?"

"What's it…are you trying to _extort _me?"

"Calm down. Such a dramatic word, extortion. It just seems to me that you have a concern, I have an interest, and they're at odds with one another. How are we going to resolve that? I really want to meet Julie. And in three weeks I'll be in Chicago for a conference, so…" He shrugged.

How in the hell did this kid know Julie lived in Chicago? Had Tami told him? Had he found out on his own?

"Take some time to think about it," Josh said. "To think about what it's worth to you to have me just…disappear from your lives. Take a couple of weeks. No hurry."

"You're out of your mind."

"I don't think I am. I think you're out of your mind with concern that your daughters' lives will be upset by my existence. Because it's not just Julie, is it? How old is Gracie?"

Eric was now gripping his fork so tightly that it left a deep impression in the palm of his hand.

"Just think about it," Josh said. "I wouldn't discuss this with Tami, though, if I were you, because I get the impression she thinks you're a little jealous of me coming back into her life, and she's probably just going to think anything bad you say against me is a jealous misunderstanding on your part."

"Well, Josh, there's one little flaw in your plan. You've completely misjudged my relationship with my wife." Tami _did_ think he was jealous, but surely she wouldn't think he was _lying_? He leaned forward, his eyes hard and his voice a low hiss, "I don't know who you think you are, you little prick, but –"

"Eric – " Tami called from the other end of the restaurant as she walked abruptly toward the table. Eric pulled back. She couldn't have overheard their conversation from that distance, so something else must be upsetting her. "Honey," she said when she arrived beside him, "that was First Baptist Hospital in Tyler. My uncle's had a severe heart attack and he's going in for an emergency bypass right now. They aren't sure he'll live."

Josh stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh, Tami, I'm so sorry to hear that." It took every ounce of restraint for Eric not to move that hand and punch the kid's face.

"I hate to be rude," Tami said, rifling through her purse and leaving a pile of cash on the table to cover their meals. Eric didn't suppose Josh had ever volunteered to pay for one of their lunches. "But I think I need to….I need to go make some travel plans."

"I understand perfectly," Josh assured her. "I'll make sure the waiter gets this," he held his hand over the money, as if he was the one paying for the check and not her. "Call me if you need anything. If you need anything at all."

Eric took Tami by the waist and ushered her out of the resteraunt. She was crying when he started the SUV and backed out. Now was most certainly not the time to tell her about Josh's attempt at blackmail.

Eric wondered if the kid really was her son. Tami had said he looked like her, and he did, a little, but he supposed you could find resemblances between just about any two people if you were expecting them. Maybe the photocopied birth certificate Josh had showed her was a fake.

Which would upset Tami worse, Eric wondered, to find out Josh wasn't her son but a con man, or to find out that Josh was _both_ her son _**and**_ a con man?

He drove with one hand and held her hand tightly in the other.

"I have to get plane tickets tonight," she was saying. "I have to fly out tonight. I have to be there when he wakes up. _If_ he wakes up. And if he doesn't…he doesn't have any kids. I have to plan the -" she choked - "funeral."

"We'll get you out tonight," he assured her. "You want me to come?"

"You can't. You have a game in two days. And you have to be with Gracie."

He squeezed her hand. He was a tightened ball of protective rage, and somewhere buried underneath that was fear and sorrow for her uncle, who had been something of a moral mentor to him in his late teens. He loved Uncle Raymond too.

"It's gonna be a'ight," he told her, and realized how weak his own voice was. He cleared his throat and repeated with more firmness this time, "It's gonna be a'ight."

"I just started this job," she said, turning to look out the window. "But I can't _not_ go to Tyler."

"You'll just miss Thursday and Friday. You've got the weekend off anyway."

"Saturday interviews."

"They'll understand. It's an emergency."

She leaned her head against the window and sobbed. He pulled over on the shoulder, threw the car in park, and took her in his arms. "Keep driving," she sniffled. "I know you're trying to help, but I need to get home and pack and get on a plane."

"A'ight. A'ight. I'll get us home. You just hold on, babe."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

While the plane prepared for takeoff, Tami's mind turned to her two years of living with Uncle Raymond. She'd been waitlisted at A&M, so she continued to live with him for a second year while she attended community college. Eric came home from A&M on holidays and breaks and three-day-weekends, and they made the most of their time. He stayed with his brother on those trips home, because Uncle Raymond wouldn't let him sleep in their house.

"I don't understand," Tami told her uncle over dinner one night after Eric had gone back to A&M, "you _know_ we're having sex, so why pretend you don't and force us to sneak around?"

Uncle Raymond, as was his usual response to Tami's bluntness, smiled. "I'm not _pretending_ anything. But knowing something is happening and abetting it are two different things. It's _your_ choice whether or not to have sex with Eric. It's _my_ choice whether or not to let him sleep in this house." He speared an asparagus with his fork.

Tami had never eaten asparagus before moving in with Uncle Raymond. He ate the strangest vegetables, and he didn't cook them all in bacon grease like mom did. Maybe that's why her mother had died ten years sooner, despite being the younger sibling. Not that Uncle Raymond was dying. No. Tami refused to believe that. He would pull through the surgery.

He had to. She hadn't seen him since he'd move to Tyler. What if it was too late, and she never saw him alive again, never got to say thank you, one last time, for the way he'd helped her turn her life around, for the way he helped bring her and Eric together?

**[FNL]**

"Bobby?" Eric sat on a barstool at the kitchen counter with the phone pressed to his ear. When he and Tami had come home tonight, they'd asked the babysitter to stay long enough for Eric to get Tami to the airport and on the redeye to Dallas. From there, she'd have to rent a car and drive an hour and a half to Tyler.

"Nobody calls me Bobby anymore. _Robert_, Eric. It's _Robert_."

"Sorry. Old habits die hard. Judge Bobby isn't distinguished enough?"

"They call me Judge Taylor, actually, _Coach_ Taylor."

Eric's big brother had found his self-employment as a handy man insufficient for supporting his growing family. Before Maria got pregnant with their third child, Bobby decided to join the police force primarily for the healthcare benefits. While on the force he began to earn his college degree and decided he wanted to be a lawyer. Bobby and his family eventually moved to Waco, where he earned his J.D. with a specialty in family law. He'd begun with a focus on criminal law, but, for some reason, his parents' divorce made him want to switch.

Eric and Robert's mother had divorced their father nine years ago. The former Mrs. Taylor had announced the fact to her sons very calmly, as though she were merely commenting on a career change. It had thrown Eric completely off balance. At least once a week, he would ask Tami, "Are you happy?" and finally, Tami said, "Eric, you _knew_ your mother wasn't happy," and he replied, "But my dad never knew." Robert had become his mother's closet advisor in the divorce proceedings, making sure she got her fair share of everything, even though he wasn't yet a lawyer himself.

Somehow, despite taking sides in the divorce, Bobby had remained their father's favorite. "Look at your brother," Eric's father would say some years after the divorce, "He went from lawyer to judge in just four years." Eric would point out that he himself had gone from head coach of a high school team to college QB coach in just _one_ year. "But you quit that position," his dad would remind him. "Didn't you?"

Eric was happy for his brother, but he also didn't like that Bobby had outstripped him in the area of education, which had once been Eric's leading edge in their perennial sibling rivalry. Bobby, it seemed, had beat him in every competition. He'd been a better athlete than Eric, playing three sports in high school to Eric's two and getting drafted to the minor leagues when he was 17. (He quit the next year because he decided his odds of making the majors were slim to none, his handy man business was paying more per hour than minor league baseball, and the enormous time commitment the game required was straining his relationship with Maria.) Bobby had always gotten more girlfriends, too, bedding four girls in high school to Eric's one. Not that Eric had pursued more girls than Cindy; if he had, he was sure, he would have had at least one more conquests than his brother.

"Eric, it's eleven o'clock," Bobby said.

It was midnight in Pennsylvania. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

"Well I wasn't exactly _sleeping_."

In the background, Eric could hear Maria laugh and holler, "Don't worry Eric, he wasn't getting anywhere anyway!"

"She's lying," Bobby said. "She can't resist my seductions."

"Then why did you answer the phone?" Eric certainly wouldn't have picked up if he'd been anywhere near a successful seduction with Tami.

"Because you never call me on a weekday, and never late at night. Did somebody die?"

"Nah. Well. Tami's uncle Raymond had a heart attack. Tami's on her way to First Baptist hospital in Tyler now."

"Ah, that's a damn shame. I always did like him. He married me and Maria."

"I know." Maria's priest had refused to perform the ceremony because the couple had been living in sin. "He married me and Tami too." It had been tricky, because he'd also walked Tami down the aisle and given her away. "But that's not why I called. I need your family court expertise."

It sounded like Bobby, who was on a cell phone, was moving to a different room. "God, Eric, no!" he whisper-hissed. Then, louder, when he was apparently away from Maria: "Don't tell me you and Tami are getting a divorce. You're not getting custody of Gracie if Tami wants custody, you know. And she _is_ going to get alimony. And the house. Not to mention the fact that she's a damn fine woman and you'd be a fool not to do everything you possibly can to – "

"- No! We're not getting a divorce. But thanks for the confidence. You know, I've been married almost as long as you have."

"Well," Bobby boasted, "I've got you beat by four years in the marriage department."

"Yeah, but you're four years older than me, so we're tied. Listen, I need to know – how can a person get sealed adoption records unsealed?"

"I don't know Pennsylvania law," Bobby said.

"I'm talking in Texas. And I'm talking just an adoptee. If just an adoptee wanted them unsealed."

"Eric, you know I was just kidding about you being adopted, right? I mean, I know you're the only one with black hair in the family, but - "

"- It's not about me. And my hair is dark brown."

"It's black. Anyway, an adoptee would have to apply to have them unsealed. And usually you have to receive counseling first. And you have to submit proof of identification. And you have to have a good reason for asking for the records. You can't just be curious. And then, it's up to the judge."

"How often will a judge unseal the records?"

"If the birth parents are still alive? And the adoptee doesn't have a damn good reason? And a birth parent hasn't registered that he or she is looking for the adoptee? Not very often."

"But with a relative inside the court, it might be possible – "

"- Eric, are you asking me to do you a favor? I'm not going to do anything unethical, you know."

"No. I know. I just – "

"- Is Tami adopted or something?"

Eric sighed. "So it wouldn't be possible for someone to get an adoption record unsealed unless that person was for sure the adoptee?"

"Or a close relative of the adoptee. What's this about?"

"So some regular, unrelated guy couldn't unseal records and just…copy them."

"Of course not," Bobby said. "What's this about?"

"Nothing."

"So you were just watching _Law and Order_ reruns and wanted some background? So you called me at eleven on Wednesday? Is that it? What the hell, Eric? What's this about?"

"It's nothing. I was just curious. Sorry I called so late. Tell Maria I said hi. You better get back to…whatever you need to get back to."

Eric hung up the phone.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

As the plane descended in Texas, somewhere in the darkness below, Tami could make out the outline of a lake. It made her think of the first time she'd had sex with Eric, which had differed from her very first time in a hundred ways, starting with the fact that they'd talked about it for weeks in advance….

**[FNL]**

Eric was surprised to learn Tami had never had sex with Mo.

"Did he tell anyone we did?" she asked.

Eric creaked his rocking chair back and forth and looked at a loose board in the far corner of Uncle Raymond's porch. They'd spent a lot of evenings out here, just talking on the porch. They'd been officially dating since that second kiss in late January, and it was now May. He'd stopped hanging out in the coaches' office so their relationship wouldn't be "inappropriate," and since football season was over, and since he wasn't getting paid anyway. Eric had been accepted as a transfer student to A&M, lined up an apartment with two other guys, and was leaving North Dillon in July.

Tami stood up abruptly from her rocking chair. "What did he tell people?"

"Just locker room talk, Tami. I overheard stuff, as a coach, you know."

"What _stuff_?" she insisted.

"He didn't exactly say…he….people infer is all."

"And what did _**you**_ _infer_?"

"I _inferred_ you two were having sex."

"Well we weren't," she insisted. "We did a few things. We didn't…go _all_ the way. Just because I went all the way with the first guy doesn't mean I have to do it with the second! Or the third." Some years later, Tami would remind her own daughter of this fact.

"Okay," Eric said as she sat down again and rocked her chair in rhythm with her irritation. "Look, I'm not asking you to go all the way if you don't want to. I just asked if you wanted to meet in Bobby's house when they're away for their anniversary so we could have more time alone together. Watch a video. Maybe make-out a little. I didn't say _sex_."

"But you were _thinking_ sex," she replied.

He sighed. "I'm _always_ thinking sex, Tami. I'm a guy. But the point is I love you, and I just want to be with you as much as I can, however you'll let me, and I'll go as slow as you want."

"You what?"

"I'll go as slow as you want."

"No, before that. After the point is…."

"Did I say I loved you?"

She laughed. "Yeah, you did."

"Damn. I wanted to make it a big deal the first time. Say it in some romantic situation. Not just in the middle of a random sentence like that."

"I love you too." She came over and sat in his lap, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her. "I have to get on the pill before we have sex," she said when she pulled away. "And I want to have been on it for a month before we do it, just to make sure it's working."

"Okay."

"And I wantit to be special our first time. Not in your brother's house."

"Like a hotel?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. There's no really nice hotel around here." In those days, there had been single motel in North Dillon, and it was sketchy. "Just….something more romantic than your brother's house."

"Okay…I'll make it….we'll do something romantic. This means we're having sex?"

"Not right away. But sometime before you go off to A&M, yes."

"You don't have to, you know, just because I'm leaving. I'll be back as often as I can. And I won't cheat on you. I'm not Mo."

"I know I don't have to," she said. "I _want_ to."

They talked about it on and off after that, before the _big date_. Tami was a little shy about the fact that he was so much more experienced than she was. "Experienced?" he asked. "We've both had sex with exactly one other person."

"I had it _once_ with one other person," she said. "You had it like three hundred times." And then, tentatively, "Was she really good?"

"Tami! Come on, now. Really?"

"Never mind."

"And we only had it 58 times."

"You counted every time?"

"No," he insisted, flushing red. "It's an estimate."

Tami couldn't imagine being with Eric for four years and only having sex with him 58 times. True, he and Cindy had dated for a year first, but they were together for three years after that. That was less than twice a month. How was that possible? Thoughts of having sex with Eric popped into her head twice an _hour_.

When they talked about it and planned it, they called it "the big _date_," and when the day of "the big _date_" finally arrived, Eric picked a camping spot by the lake, on the opposite side of North Dillon, in Dillon, because it was secluded and away from everyone they knew. They took a row boat all the way across the lake, just as the sun was beginning to set, camping gear tied up tightly between them. The orange and red rays rippled across the surface of the water. He'd timed it well.

Tami quit rowing two-thirds of the way through and just watched him, the muscles of his arms and shoulders straining against his tight t-shirt as he pulled the oars, his hair adorably tasseled by a spring breeze, his eyes twinkling with expectation. Eventually, the summer heat was too much for him, and he shed the shirt. She watched as a bead of sweat trickled down the sinews of his chest. "You aren't going to help anymore?" he asked.

She smiled. "You can row the rest of the way. Think of it as foreplay."

That wasn't their only foreplay. In a clearing in the forest by the lake they rolled out the sleeping bag and undressed one another in the light rays of the fading sun. They crawled into the sleeping bag and began their eager explorations, hands following eyes, lips following hands. She was glad they'd planned ahead, that she was on the pill, and that they didn't need to bother with fumbling for a condom.

"Tami," he breathed, "I want you so very much. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," she whispered.

Later, they crawled out of the sleeping bag, dressed, lit a fire, and cooked some hot dogs and roasted marshmallows.

"Why do you always set your marshmallows on fire?" he asked her.

"I like them black," she said, popping one into her mouth and murmuring.

"I hear once you go black, you never go back."

"Well I'm not going back," she said. "I'm burning every one." She giggled and butted him with her shoulder.

"Did you like that?"

"Of course," said Tami, licking her fingers. "They're best burnt."

"No," he said, looking a shyer than she was used to seeing him and nodding toward the sleeping bag, "did you like _that_?"

"Yeah, of course, couldn't you tell?"

"Well, you didn't, you know…make a lot of noise."

"I didn't want to disturb anyone."

Eric glanced around at the lake and forest and the miles of privacy. There was another fire, somewhere on the western shore, and one on the east, but none anywhere near them. "Disturb who?"

She smiled. "Sorry. I was just….maybe I'm a little shy."

"You don't strike me as the shy type."

"I'll be louder time," she said, her voice a little wounded, "if that's what you like."

"I like it _all_, Tami. I like anything. It was _fantastic_. I just want to know you're enjoying yourself."

She put another marshmallow on her stick. "You're an auditory guy, huh? I thought guys were visual."

"We're both." He slid and arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. "I love you."

He wasn't the first person to say "I love you," that had been Mo, but she thought maybe he was the first person to mean it. It made her want to cry.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing's wrong. Everything's right. I just realized…I've never made love to anyone before."

"You…you had a …." he didn't say baby.

"But, I've never _made love_."

"Ah."

She smiled. "And I want to do it again."

"Right now?" he said, obviously surprised.

"_Right now_."

As he took her hand and tugged her back toward the sleeping bag, she teased, "You might want to plug your ears."

**[FNL]**

The plane touched down on the tarmac with a loud screech. What a crazy night it had been, and the night was far from over. Eric had seemed really upset when he dropped her off at the airport, more upset than she expected. She knew he loved Uncle Raymond too, but he had seemed almost _angry_ when they left. She hoped he wasn't still angry about their fight over whether or not to tell Julie.

Tami texted her husband: "Landed. I'll call you when I have more information. I love you."


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

Eric finally fell asleep at 1 AM. Thirty minutes later, his cell phone woke him.

"My uncle made it through the surgery alive," Tami said, "but they won't let me see him until visiting hours start at 9."

"Thank God," Eric sighed. "He's always been a tough old man."

She laughed. "When we were dating, he wasn't old, you know. He was the same age you are now."

"Nah. He was old. He just hasn't aged much since then."

"Listen, are you still mad at me about the whole fight we had at dinner?"

"No," he answered, flicking on the bedside lamp and then squinting. "Are you mad at me?"

"No, but we should probably talk about it."

"We don't need to discuss that right now, babe. You've got bigger things on your mind." He wasn't going to tell her about what Josh said until she was back home and he could hold her through the blow. "What's the plan for your uncle?"

"They said if the recovery goes well, they'll release him Saturday. I thought I'd help him get settled back in his apartment, be there to help him out Sunday, and then fly back Monday. Are you okay with that? I have to clear the extra day off with Braemore, but I think I can."

"Sure. You do what you need to do."

They talked awhile longer. Afterwards, Eric lay in bed, awake and worrying, until 3:00 AM, when he decided just to give in and get up and watch TV. He finally went back to bed at 5:00. An hour later, his alarm clock went off.

**[FNL]**

Coach Taylor rubbed his eyes as one of his assistant coaches paused the game tape and asked, "Did you not see that?"

"Nah," Eric replied. "Just rewind it again."

"Jesus, Eric," Coach Washington said, "you're practically falling asleep. We've got morning practice in thirty minutes and a game tomorrow!"

"I know. I'm watching now."

When all of his coaches had cleared out, he held back Coach Marion, a plump, short, bald-headed man.

"What is it Coach?" Marion asked as he closed the door and sat down opposite him.

"You know that P.I. you were talkin' about hiring?" Eric asked. Marion had hired a guy to investigate his wife, whom he thought was cheating on him. He had talked on and on about it for weeks, and Eric had tried to ignore the chatter.

"Yeah."

"Was he any good?"

"A little too good," Coach Marion replied. "I didn't really need all those close-up shots."

Eric lowered his coach's cap over his eyes. "Do you have his business card?"

"Oh, God, no, Eric. Not Tami! She never struck me as the cheating type."

"No, no, Tami's not cheating on me."

"But you just want to be sure," Coach Marion said with quiet sympathy. "I understand."

"No! I _know_ she's not cheating on me. It's another matter entirely."

"What kind of matter?" Coach Marion asked.

"A _private_ matter," he said between closed teeth.

"Okay. I just hope this private matter doesn't interfere with the game on Friday. You know, this team is set to slaughter us. I'd like our boys to come out of what is probably going to be the last game of their season with at least a shred of dignity."

"The card?"

**[FNL] **

The private investigator's last name was Watson. That had to be some kind of a joke, but Eric didn't know who else to call. Bobby hadn't been able to tell him much that was useful.

Eric met with the P.I. during his lunch break, in the man's car, in the parking lot of the school. He felt guilty and watched, as if he was conducting a drug deal. At least the man wasn't wearing a trench coat and didn't have a notepad. Watson had on a windbreaker and took notes on his iPad.

"Is Watson your real last name?" Eric asked him.

"Do I look like my last name would be Watson?" the man asked.

"Looks more like it would be Hernandez."

"It's Flores. I changed it because people are more likely to hire a P.I. who sounds Anglo than one who sounds Hispanic. And people remember the name Watson."

Eric gestured to the man's iPad. "Think you can find out if he's really her son?"

"How much did he ask for?"

"He didn't specify," Eric said. "He was very vague."

"Has he tried to contact you again?"

"Not yet."

"What's the name of the biological father? Maybe I can find out if he's tried to extort him too. Does your wife know the father's name?"

"Yes she knows his name!" Of course, Tami didn't know much more about him than that. Still, it rankled Eric, Watson's implication. "It's John Manson. Or Mason maybe. She told me once but I don't remember."

"Well ask her."

"I…I can't right now." That would seem an odd question to bring up out of the blue. Say, what was the name of that guy who knocked you up again? "I'm pretty sure it was either Mason or Manson. In Kingsville, Texas. Or at least he was."

"Do you know what year he was born? The father?"

"Well, he's my age. I'm 42."

"Okay," Watson said, "I'll find what I can on this Josh Sanderson kid. But don't pay the bribe. Never pay the bribe."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"How long did he give you to think about it?"

"A couple weeks. But if you can find something before my wife gets back on Monday night - "

"- I'll do what I can. That's a pretty short time frame though. And call me immediately if he contracts you again with specifics."

**[FNL]**

Uncle Raymond's eyes fluttered opened. "Loretta?" he asked. "Am I dead?"

"What? No. Uncle Raymond, it's me."

"Oh! Tami!" He smiled. "You look just like your mother did when she was your age. I thought I was dead and had gone to heaven. I was a little surprised to see your mother there."

Tami let out a great laugh. She knew Uncle Raymond wasn't serious about that last part. It was a relief to see him in good humor.

"You didn't have to come all this way," he said.

"Who else is going to take care of you when they release you Saturday?" His wife was gone. His sister was dead. He had no children.

"I could have hired a hot, young Swedish nurse if you hadn't come down."

"Yeah," she said, handing him a large cup containing water and bending the straw in his direction. "Well, too bad. You're stuck with me."

**[FNL]**

Eric swung open the classroom door and announced to the line of waiting students, "Come in, ladies and gentlemen." After spending his lunch break with the P.I., he'd had to lock the door again to shovel down a sandwich. A large styrofoam cup of coffee still rested on his desk. He was going to need every last drop of that.

After taking attendance he put on a documentary. "Pay attention," he said. "Could be a quiz."

"There's not gonna be any quiz," Marcus said from the back of the classroom. "You'd actually have to bother to write the quiz. And then you'd have to bother to grade it."

"Son," Eric pointed a finger at him, "you just wait until football season is over. There'll be a whole five month's left of school, and you're gonna regret that mouth."

He turned off the classroom lights and turned on the small lamp at his own desk before sitting down to check his school e-mail on his laptop. He scanned the list - a bunch of internal memos and an e-mail from Cindy. Cindy. He'd forgotten about her. He took a gulp of his coffee, which was now lukewarm, and opened it.

"Sorry," she wrote. "I didn't realize this was your work e-mail. I tried to get in touch with you via Facebook, but I don't think you check your messages there very often. My firm just broke ground on a second office in Philadelphia, and I'll be in town this weekend to help get things up and running. I thought we might meet for lunch on Saturday. Give me a call." And then she left her number.

He _was_ curious to see what she was like after all these years, but he was pretty sure Tami wouldn't want them to meet. Of course, Tami had hung out with Mo that year he'd blown into Dillon, with his cowboy hat and his stupid bolo tie and his fancy helicopter. She'd gone to his cocktail party, taken him to the game, _and_ accepted his dinner invitation. One date after the next after the next. And Eric was _supposed_ to have been _fine_ with that. Then again, Tami had made sure Eric was involved in all three of those things.

He wrote back, "My wife is out of town. Maybe we can meet for lunch sometime when she's able to join us. I'll talk to her and get back to you." He gave her his personal e-mail because he didn't want her sending anymore e-mails to his work. Of course, he never checked his personal e-mail, but maybe that was for the best.

When he was done checking his e-mails, he closed his laptop and lay his head down on the desk, for just a moment.

The bell woke him up with a start. Standing right beside his desk was Principal White, which was a funny name, since she was black. She just stared him down until the last kid had filed out of the classroom.

"Coach Taylor, we take the education of every child seriously here at Pemberton High."

Eric sat up a little straighter and took off the cap he'd had on when she came in the door.

"You can't just show up and think that's enough," she said. "Most of these kids aren't going to go home and teach themselves or get help from mom and dad. You've got to educate. You're not in Dillon, Texas anymore, young man. _Here_ we've got kids from broken homes. _Here_ we've got _teenage_ girls getting pregnant. _Here_ we've got boys living with their grandmothers."

"With all due respect, ma'am, I don't think you've ever been to Dillon, Texas."

"No I have not. But I've been in your classroom. And I've seen you sleeping on the job. Just now, in fact."

"I apologize," he let a hand hover over the desk. "I've been under – I apologize."

"And I thought you were one of the good ones, young man. I had a good feeling about you."

"I _am_ one of the good ones," he insisted. "It hasn't been like this every day."

She shook her head. "By the way, Ms. Smith called about Sean's first quarter grade again."

"I'm not gonna raise that grade!" Eric stood up and seized hold of his cap on the desk. "That kid earned a C- and I gave him a C- because that's what that kid earned. He's not learning a damn thing if I go and raise his grade because his mamma called the principal."

Principal White chuckled. She shook a finger at him. "I knew I liked you for some reason, Coach Taylor. I knew there was a reason." She was still shaking her head and chuckling when she walked out the door.

He put his cap back on his head and straightened up for his next period.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

Tami tidied up her uncle's hospital tray. It seemed no one ever came in to empty the half eaten containers of apple sauce or the little cups of juice. That was all he'd felt like eating since the surgery. He'd been sleeping a lot, on and off. She'd ended up buying two magazines and a book at the hospital gift shop to preoccupy herself at his bedside. She had checked into a hotel just a mile from the hospital, but she'd only spent a few hours there to sleep last night.

Uncle Raymond stirred and asked, "You're still here?"

"Of course." She sat down in the chair by his bedside. "Listen, I want to talk to you about something. I took your keys when you fell asleep this morning and ran by your apartment because I thought you'd want your reading glasses. I went to the address you gave me when you moved. I didn't expect what I found. "

He fiddled with the buttons on his bed to bring it into an upright position. "I take it you didn't retrieve my glasses?

"I did," she said, pulling them from her purse and laying them on the nightstand beside his bed. "Although I didn't even feel safe in the parking lot." Tami put a hand over his hand and said softly, "Why didn't you tell us you were in financial difficulty? Eric and I would have gladly helped you out, you know. We still will."

He laughed. "I'm not in any financial difficulty, Tami. I chose to live there. I'm trying to minister to the people in that apartment complex. I've started a little church among them. Only twenty members at the moment, but it's growing. There's a huge mission field in that place."

"And you've been safe there?" she asked.

He shrugged. "My place was broken into once. But I think they figured out I didn't have much worth stealing."

She squeezed his hand. "But when it comes to recovering from all this…"

He sighed. "I've made a couple of good friends in that complex. They'll help me out, I'm sure. I'll be fine. I promise you. How are your kids?"

Tami opened her mouth and then closed it. She looked down at her hands. "They're fine. My son…"

"Your son?"

"The one I gave away. He…showed up."

Uncle Raymond moved the hospital bed forward still more, until he was sitting straight up. "Those records were sealed."

"I know. He unsealed them somehow."

"You can't just do that."

"Well he did, and he located me, and we've been getting to know each other." She smiled. "But I think Eric's a little jealous."

"Sure he is. That child is something he doesn't share with you, and being the father of your children…that's something he's always been proud of. I remember when I visited you after Julie was born. The pride on that man's face." He smiled his soft, but almost wry, smile. "I also remember when you were 18, and you came home from babysitting his nephew together, and you told me, Eric Taylor's going to make an excellent father. Do you remember that?"

Tami did. Eric had been home from A&M for a three-day weekend, and it had been the first time she'd seen him in two months. He told her he'd volunteered them to babysit so his brother and Maria could get out on a date, and she'd been miffed, until he'd explained that the baby slept his first shift from 7 to 9. It gave them a chance to fool around in Eric's old bedroom, which was slowly being turned into a room for the baby.

Tami didn't care about romance at that point. She just _needed_ him. Rob, Jr. was in his a crib in his parents' room at the time, and the old bed still remained in Eric's room, but the walls had been stripped of all his football posters and pendants and repainted with a baseball theme. They'd been so eager, shedding only half their clothes before the first round.

After the second round of lovemaking, when Rob, Jr. began stirring, Tami saw what Eric was like with that little guy, and she watched them smiling. Tami held the baby herself, cradled in her arms, and felt a pang of sadness for the child she'd given up. She thought Eric could see it in her face, and knew just what she was thinking, but he didn't say anything. He just kissed her and whispered, "I love you." But that night she knew she wanted Eric Taylor to be the father of her children. She didn't tell him, of course. He'd have had a heart attack, right then and there. But she _knew_.

"Yeah," she laughed. "I remember."

"You two were always volunteering to babysit that kid. You must have really loved that kid. Or…at least…the two hours he slept." Uncle Raymond smirked.

"Hey, you were the one who wouldn't let Eric stay with us."

"Eh," the minister said. "It made him work harder for you. Trust me, it was for your own good."

She brushed a strand of white hair affectionately from his forehead. That hair used to be so blonde. "I think everything you did was intended for my good. I was lucky my mom sent me to live with you."

"About this kid," Uncle Raymond said. "Your son…are you going to tell Julie and Gracie?"

Tami sighed. "We haven't decided that yet. Eric clearly doesn't want to, but I don't know how I can keep it from them, if I keep seeing him."

"Don't tell them without Eric's agreement."

"I wouldn't. I won't."

"You guys have a good marriage. I envy you that. I miss that," he said softly. He rarely mentioned his late wife, but he'd never remarried since her death. "I wish I'd have had children."

Tami kissed his forehead. "You do." She liked to think of herself as his daughter, anyway. "And grandchildren. _Three_ of them."

"Be cautious, Tami. Don't give your whole heart to this kid right away. He may not stay in your life long."

It was a warning Tami didn't want to hear, because she had already grown quite fond of Josh. So instead of responding, she stood up. "I think we need to get you some real food."

**[FNL]**

After early morning practice, Eric kicked his coaches out of his office, locked the door, and called the P.I. to check for any developments in the case.

"Three things," Watson told him. "First, no one by the name of Josh Sanderson is a math teacher at any private school in Philadelphia."

"Figures," Eric muttered.

"Second, the name of the father of your wife's child is John Mason, not John Manson."

"I told you it was one or the other."

"Third, I checked with the Kingsville court system. An application _was_ made to unseal the adoption records, but it _wasn't_ made by your wife's son. It was made by John Mason over three years ago."

"What? Why? He didn't want anything to do with that kid. He gave her money for an abortion."

"I don't know," Watson said, "I'm not a psychologist."

Eric shook his head.

"Anyway, his request was **_not_ **granted by the judge, but it appears he later signed up for the Voluntary Adoption Registry in Texas. It allows adoptees and birth parents to locate each other, but only if they're both looking. Now I checked with a contact of mine in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and he said there was a breach in the registry a year ago. So my guess is that your Josh Sanderson got into that system and used it to his advantage – maybe evening making fake entries for himself as people's birth children and then contacting his marks through the system. Your wife wasn't in the system, but he probably learned of her through John Mason's record. He probably forged the birth certificate he showed her. Did she get a close look at it?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"Has he tried to contact you again?" Watson asked.

"No. Not yet."

"Call me immediately if he does."

Eric asked, "Shouldn't I be calling the police at this point?"

"If you want, but I guarantee you they aren't going to devote the resources to this case that I'm currently devoting to it. The Philadelphia police department has much bigger fish to fry. And this is the most fun I've had on a case in years. I'm usually just dealing with cheating spouses. Let me have two more days to find out what I can. I'll give you a discount."

"A'ight. Fine. Sure." Eric hung up the phone, ripped his cap off his head, and threw it against the wall. He rubbed his brow. So the kid wasn't Tami's son. Not likely, anyway. Was that better or worse than if he was?

He pulled out his playbook. Every muscle in his body was taut with anger as he tried to concentrate on the play diagrams. He'd _almost_ gotten in the zone when Coach Marion knocked on his office door and poked his head in.

"Our meeting's not for another ten minutes," Eric grumbled.

"Yeah…uh…there's some _real_ pretty woman here to see you."

Who could it be? Tami was in Texas, and Coach Marion would have recognized Tami anyway. She was at all the games.

As Marion stepped back, he revealed a platinum blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in her late thirties or early forties. She was wearing a low-cut blouse that emphasized her well-formed chest. Eric's assistant coach shot him a curious look and then disappeared, shutting the door behind himself.

The woman smiled. "I figured I'd have better luck if I tried to schedule a lunch in person."

Eric stood up. "Cindy?"


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

When they were teenagers, Cindy had sported brown hair, not blond, and Eric didn't remember her chest being quite that big.

"You look surprised," she said as he stood staring. "Guess you didn't look through my photographs on Facebook." She sat down in the chair across from his desk and put her purse on the ground.

"You had brown hair in your profile picture."

"That's an old one. That was for Throwback Thursday."

He sat down slowly. "Throwback what?"

"You always were kind of in your own world, Eric. If it wasn't football…." She shook her head.

Now that he'd had time to adjust to the surprise, he was able to worry about her assertiveness in coming directly to him. "Listen, I've got a meeting in ten minutes. Because I have a game tonight. An important game."

"Your games always were important to you."

"They still are."

"Look, Eric, I understand you're probably a little weirded out by some girl from the past blowing back into your life, and your wife is probably a bit concerned about it too. But I needed to see you."

"What the hell is this?" he asked, the anger he thought was long ago buried suddenly resurfacing and mingling with his anger over Josh Sanderson, becoming one intertwined ball of rage at the injustice of the world. "We were engaged. Engaged! And you took off with nothing but a letter. And you didn't call. And I didn't hear from you for…I _never_ heard from you. And then suddenly, _now_, over two decades later you want to be…I don't even know what you want to be."

Undaunted by his outburst, Cindy leaned forward over the desk. "I want to be forgiven, Eric. _Apology accepted_ isn't going to cut it. This is me needing to be forgiven. This is me working out some things. I have a bucket list of sorts. I got breast cancer." She sat back and waved a hand over herself. "Double mastectomy. These are fake. You probably noticed."

He felt suddenly awful for his little rant. "But…you look so healthy."

"I'm doing well at the moment. The chances of resurgence are low now that I've had the bilateral. But it was a wake-up call for me. It made me aware of my own mortality."

He glanced nervously at the clock and then back at her.

"One lunch, Eric. Can you give me that?"

"A'ight. Okay. Let me get a babysitter for my daughter on Saturday and we'll meet at Antonio's in Narberth." It was a casual place in the borough where the Taylors lived, a brick oven pizzeria, with checkered plastic tablecloths, nothing that could be mistaken as romantic.

"I have a GPS," she said. "I'll find it. Noon?"

"Noon, sure, yeah. But I _really_ have to get back to work now."

Maybe it was a bad idea to set the lunch date, but it seemed the quickest way to get her out of his office.

When she was gone, Coach Marion popped his head back in. "And you're getting a P.I. to trail Tami? When you're the one – " He jerked his thumb in the direction Cindy had left.

Eric rolled his eyes ceiling ward. "Tom, I'm not cheating on my wife. I'm not spying on Tami. And I'm not getting a divorce. And none of any of this is any of your damn business. Call the other coaches in now, would you?"

"Yes, Coach."

**[FNL] **

Eric's first season in Philadelphia was nearly over, but he still hadn't gotten used to these late afternoon games, played in sunlight instead of beneath the artificial glow of the Friday night lights. It was cold enough that Eric could feel the chill through his dark green Pemberton jacket. Occasionally he glanced into the stands to look for the Lancasters, a neighbor couple who was watching Gracie. Their son was actually on the rival team.

Living in the suburbs meant Eric was no longer neighbors with his players, and it meant a thirty minute commute each way, but low crime and Gracie's education came first. He could have coached a team in Narberth; he'd gotten an offer at a school there, but Pemberton had appealed to him more. After working with the Lions, which had been the most gratifying accomplishment of his life, he wanted another challenge, and the Pioneers certainly seemed to pose one. He'd done a lot of work with these kids this year, and they'd come a long way. Tonight they were down by nine in an intense game, with little time on the clock.

For an afternoon, Eric forgot his rage against Josh Sanderson and his sorrow and fear for the pain Tami would experience when he told her the truth. He forgot Cindy Waters and her double mastectomy and set aside his worry over Uncle Raymond's health. He forgot it all and lost himself in the game, running down the sidelines when the Pioneers intercepted the ball, yelling for one of his boys to take it all the way – and damn if the kid didn't.

In the end, the Pioneers lost by three, but they felt good about coming as far as they had. Today was supposed to have been a massacre. Coach Taylor beamed with pride when he talked to his boys in the locker room after the game. He told them that next year they would make it to the finals, maybe even State.

He was still abuzz from the game when he stopped by the Lancasters' house an hour later to pick up Gracie. They'd graciously fed her dinner. Eric didn't eat until Gracie was in bed. He put in a frozen pizza because Tami wasn't there to call it a "sad dinner." He looked in the fridge and grunted to find only one beer left. He didn't open wine unless Tami was at home.

After he'd eaten and slurped down his one beer, he settled into his recliner, put on a recorded football game on mute, and called Tami. She asked about his game and updated him on Uncle Raymond. "And I just don't know," she said, "about leaving him on Monday in that god awful apartment. That place is run down, Eric, and the rough teenagers hanging out in the parking lot…"

"Well, he's lived there for over a year already, Tami. He's a grown man."

"He's over sixty! And he's been working non-stop in ministry, and now he's taken on a project like this. No wonder he had a heart attack."

"You're not going to talk him out of it. He seems all mild on the outside, but there's steel underneath that velvet. You know that."

She sighed. "I do. I take him home to his place tomorrow afternoon. I'll stay with him until my flight Monday."

"Wait, you're not staying there with him, are you?"

"Eric! You just said it was fine for him to stay there."

"Yeah, I know, but…."

"There's steel underneath this velvet too, you know."

He lowered his voice. "Are you wearing velvet?"

She laughed. "I'm _going_ to stay with him. He says he has neighbors who will help. But I'm also going to try to talk him into retiring. "

"I don't like the idea of you staying there."

"I know you don't, sweetheart. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm going to."

"Does your uncle have a gun?"

"Eric."

"Does he?"

"Probably."

"Make sure you know where it is. And lock the doors. And don't go out at night by yourself. And call me before you go to bed on Saturday and when you wake up on Sunday."

"It's sweet you care about my safety, hon. But don't lose sleep over it."

He _was_ going to lose sleep, all right, over that and more. However, there was one thing he _didn't_ want to lose sleep over. He was keeping what he knew about Josh from her for the time being, but he couldn't keep his luncheon date from her too. "Listen. I ran into Cindy Waters today."

"What? I thought she lived in Pittsburgh."

"Her accounting firm is opening an office in Phili. She was breaking ground on the office."

"And she just _happened_ to run into you? Really?"

"Well, you _happened_ to run into Mo a few years ago at the grocery store, didn't you?"

"Dillon is considerably smaller than Philadelphia, Eric."

"She came to my office.

"Your _office_? Your _private space_?"

"She wants to meet for lunch."

Tami let out an exasperated sound, half a laugh, half a grunt.

"You met Mo for lunch. _Dinner_ actually. And you went to his cocktail party. _And_ you invited him to sit beside you in the stands at my game."

"Well, fine, then tell Cindy we'd be happy to have lunch sometime when I get back."

"I did," he said, "but…seems she can only meet tomorrow."

"That's what _she_ says. She's _after_ you, Eric. She got divorced and figures rather than try internet dating, she'll just call up and old boyfriend and see if she can't get a gig as the other woman."

"Tami. Come on now. That's a bit much, isn't it?"

"She wrote to tell you that you were sexy, didn't she?"

"Not out of the blue. Remember? _Context_?"

Tami made a hrmphing sound.

He told her about the breast cancer. "I just feel bad for her," he explained. "I feel like I should meet with her. Give her this bit of…peace."

"She probably just got a boob job and made up the whole breast cancer thing."

"When did you become so suspicious of people? You sure haven't been suspicious of Josh." He winced. It wasn't time to tell her about that. That had to be handled face to face.

"Why _should_ I be? What do you mean, _suspicious_?"

"Nothing."

"Are you still jealous?" she asked. "Eric, come on now. I thought you'd gotten past that. He's my son."

_Not likely_, he thought. "I know," he said. "Sorry. I didn't mean…sorry. Do you want me to cancel the lunch? I will if you want. If it makes you uncomfortable."

She sighed. "I trust you, sugar. I just don't trust _her_. But go ahead and have the lunch."

Because of the resigned way she said it, Eric thought maybe this was some kind of a test. "You sure?"

"I said go ahead."

"A'ight then. I love you."

"Love you too. Hug and kiss Gracie Belle for me."

When he hung the phone he turned on a game he'd DVRed earlier, but he couldn't get his mind off his laundry list of worries. So he opened Tami's last bottle of wine.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty**

Tami was sitting next to Uncle Raymond's hospital bed and talking to him about his latest adventures in church planting when a man let out a low whistle in the entryway. She looked up with extreme annoyance, ready to tear into the catcaller, but her stern expression morphed into a smile.

"Robert!" she exclaimed and walked over to hug her brother-in-law.

When she pulled away from him, he said, "You look fantastic, Tami. Did you lose weight?"

"No, I didn't. I think I've gained a couple of pounds since you last saw me, actually."

"Well you look more gorgeous than ever."

Eric hated when Robert flirted with her like this, but she loved it. Robert was completely harmless, because he was completely in love with his own wife.

("It's just uncouth," Eric had told her once, "the way he talks to you." She'd smiled. "_Uncouth? _It would be if I were just some woman on the street, but we're family." Eric had frowned. "You'd think it was uncouth if I flirted like that with Maria." Tami had laughed out loud. "No. I'd just wonder who you were.")

Robert now came over to stand by Uncle Raymond's bedside. "Hey, Reverend, do you remember me at all? I'm Eric's brother."

"Of course I remember you. It's been, what?"

"Over fifteen years, probably. I live in Waco, and Eric told me you were laid up, so I thought I'd pop in and say hello. Wish you quick healing."

Robert sat down in one of the two chairs by the bedside and Tami sat next to him.

"That's kind of you, Bobby," Uncle Raymond said. "That must be a two hour drive."

"I go by Robert now."

"Do you? I'm not going to remember that. How's Maria?"

"Good. Now that our youngest is in his last year of high school, she's decided to go back to nursing. She's an RN now. I kind of miss having her at home to take care of me." He glanced at Tami. "I guess Eric knows what that's like, huh? You've been working, what, five years now?"

"About."

"And still a little one at home. Can't be easy. But you've always had a little bit of Wonder Woman in you, haven't you?" He turned his attention back to Uncle Raymond, and they chatted for a while. When Uncle Raymond seemed weary, Robert suggested that he and Tami leave the man to nap and head out for lunch together.

They didn't want to eat in the hospital cafeteria, so they took Robert's car, a dark blue Mustang with white racing stripes down the middle. Tami tried not to laugh when she got inside, but as they began driving, she couldn't help but ask, "Is this your midlife crisis vehicle?"

"Yes," he said. "I thought it would be cheaper than an affair. Wait until we get on the highway."

Soon enough, Tami was screaming at him to slow down. He was laughing when he finally let up on the accelerator. "Come on," he said, "you loved it."

She shook her head. "I guess you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."

"I never really left the country. Waco's not exactly a bustling metropolis. Eric's the one in Phili."

"Still, quite the career climb for you."

He sighed. "You know, I wanted to achieve this position, but sometimes…sometimes I really miss working with my hands. The simplicity of it all. Of course, Maria always has a long to-do list for me." He switched lanes. "So where to? McDonald's?"

Tami raised her sunglasses so he could see her cool expression.

He smiled. "You know, I took Maria to McDonald's on our first date. We were 17. That was all I could afford at the time. I had my handy man business going already, but I was saving to get the hell out of my parents' place. They were still living in the trailer back then, before Dad got that first promotion. Eric and I could barely turn around in our bedroom without banging into each other." Robert shook his head.

"You did not really take Maria to McDonald's on your first date, did you?"

"Why, where did Eric take you?"

"I'm not sure what qualifies as our first date."

"Well, when did he first buy you food?"

She smiled. "That was at the diner. Cocunut cream pie and coffee."

"So no more romantic than McDonald's then? He doesn't win that one."

"Oh Good Lord, Robert. You two and your competitions. And that wasn't a date. He was just giving me a ride home and we'd ducked in to beat the rain. He wasn't interested in me at the time. In fact, a few months later, when I flat out kissed him, he told me it would be inappropriate for us to date."

"What an idiot."

"No, not really," she said. "He was being cautious. That was only a few months after Cindy left him."

"I never liked that girl. She was too…perfect. You just knew it had to be an act on some level. " He waved a finger at her. "You, on the other hand – just the right amount of _not_ perfect."

Tami chuckled. Then she frowned. "Speaking of Cindy, she's back."

Robert took an exit ramp. "What do you mean?"

Tami updated him.

"You're okay with him seeing her?"

"Sure. I think she might be hoping to start up something, but I trust Eric. She'll figure out he's off limits soon enough."

"So you two are good then? You and Eric? Solid?" He pulled into a strip mall and parked. Maybe he was serious about McDonald's after all.

"Yes, of course. Why do you ask?"

He turned off the car and motioned to a store front that read Best Thai. "I hear it's the best. Sign even says so."

When they walked inside, Tami was surprised to find the place was must fancier than it had appeared from the outside. They were seated at an ornate table draped with a dark red tablecloth, and their water glasses were immediately filled.

"Why were you asking about me and Eric?" Tami asked after they had ordered.

"Just…I see a lot of stuff in family court, you know. And I was kind of shocked when my mom left my dad, even though we all should have seen it coming. It just makes me want to be sure the people I love are solid."

"We're solid."

Robert sipped from his water glass and said, "Good. I guess my mind was going to a crazy place. When I got that call from Eric the other night asking me all those questions about adoption records, I thought – is Tami adopted? And _then_ I thought, oh shit, did Eric cheat on you at some point and have a kid with some woman and did she put it up for adoption? Then I thought, no, not Eric."

"Wait. _What_ was he asking you?"

"Uh…about adoption records. How you got them unsealed." He bit his bottom lip hard. "Please tell me I'm not telling you something you don't already know."

Tami shook her head. "I can't believe it."

"Believe what?"

"Why is he so suspicious?" she muttered.

"Suspicious of what?"

"Nothing," Tami insisted and dipped her jasmine tea bag up and down in her water.

"Tami, _please_ tell me nothing's wrong between you two. _Please_ tell me that."

She removed the tea bag. "Is that really why you came to the hospital? Not to see my uncle, but to find out if Eric and I are falling apart?"

"Just tell me you're not."

"We're not. We're working out a personal thing right now, but Eric and I – we're in it together. We might fight about it, but we're in it _together_. Our marriage is solid." Although she was growing increasingly peeved with him, when she thought about his call to Robert, a call he'd made without consulting her, regarding a secret that was _their_ secret, a call that showed he was still jealous of Josh. At least Robert didn't seem to know about her son. At least Eric hadn't betrayed her confidence. But why did Eric feel he needed to know how records were unsealed?

"Okay," Robert said. "That's all I really need to know. This adoption thing? What was that about?"

"I'm a little concerned about my uncle's living conditions," she told him, mostly to change the topic. She filled him in on the apartment complex. "He's being released this evening."

"Well, I'll go with you and help you get him settled. I can miss work Monday if I need to. I can give you a ride to the airport too. I can even stay there with y'all if you want. Sack out on the couch."

"Well, he's only got one bedroom and the couch."

"Then I can sleep on the floor in his bedroom and _you_ can have the couch."

She thanked him. It would be a relief to have Robert by her side when she brought her uncle home to that sketchy complex. Robert was a good four inches shorter than Eric, but he was a muscular man, and he had an impressive scar that ran from the top of his left eye to his temple that he'd gotten during a work accident when he was repairing someone's roof. He wasn't the sort of guy people wanted to confront in a dark alley, this family man, this former handyman, this judge who presided over other people's divorces.

"You're one of the most peculiar people I've ever met," she told him.

"I'll take that as a compliment."


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-one**

Cindy was already seated at a table when Eric showed up at Antonio's. He'd gotten to talking with the Lancasters when he dropped off Gracie. He scurried into his chair and muttered, "Sorry I'm late."

"I was afraid you'd stood me up."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't know what that was like, would I?" He raised his eyes to hers coolly, and then abruptly looked away again.

He was bothered by the fact that her abandonment still bothered him. It hadn't bothered him for years. He hadn't _thought_ about it. Hadn't thought about _her_. But her sudden appearance had stirred up a hornet's nest somewhere inside his gut. It made him feel weak, that he should feel anything at all at this point.

He forced himself to draw his eyes back to her. "The margheriti pizza is good here."

She laughed. "I don't remember you eating anything except meat on your pizza."

"Yeah…well….my wife…she's broadened my horizons. In a lot of ways." Tami sure was more adventurous in bed, for one, not that he was going to say that, even if he was thinking it, and why _was_ he thinking it? He blushed. "The sausage pizza is good too."

"Well I do like sausage," Cindy said, surveying her now open menu, "more than I used to."

Was that sexual innuendo? Eric wasn't sure. It had been a long time since a woman other than Tami had flirted with him, or, at least, a long time since he'd been cognizant of the fact. He wasn't sure if that's what was happening now or not. Tami would certainly say it was, but Tami would probably have read flirtation into anything Cindy said, and _he_ was the one who had been thinking of sex.

The waiter was standing at their tableside. Cindy had probably been sitting here for fifteen minutes. Eric hastily ordered a beer.

Cindy asked for a Diet Coke. "I'd get wine," she said as the waiter left, "but maybe that's part of what got me into this mess."

"What mess?"

"The breast cancer."

Tami drank wine all the time. One glass a night, every night. Sometimes two. On Saturday nights, they often split a bottle. "What do you mean? What does wine have to do with breast cancer?"

"There's just a correlation is all. Women who drink more than three glasses a day have a 1.5 times higher risk."

"Oh." Well, Tami didn't drink _more_ than three glasses _a day_. Did that mean Cindy used to? She'd been an alcoholic, perhaps? She'd left him to find herself, and found the bottle instead?

When they were dating, Cindy would have two beers on a Friday night after his games. That was the only time she drank, and she'd be tipsy as hell, and he could usually count on getting laid. It was about the only time he _could_ count on it.

After they'd lost their virginity to each other (in the wake of a year-long build up), Cindy had seemed eager enough for about six months, and then she'd started throwing up a lot of red light signals. Eric thought maybe he just wasn't any good at it, so he'd secretly read books and tried to improve his play with the same determination he used to approach football. Gradually, he decided it was just a male/female difference and he'd have to settle for what he could get. It never occurred to him that her reluctance might be a sign that their relationship was in trouble. She _said_ she loved him, she _seemed_ happy, and they rarely fought. (He'd fought way more with Tami in their first few years together).

"How long did you…you know…drink that much?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Longer than I should have. I started drinking heavily when my marriage started to go sour, which was about two years after we got married. Unfortunately, we stayed married for another six years after that. He cheated on me."

"Oh."

"I forgave him the first time. I thought he was sincerely sorry. We went to counseling and all that, and he put on a big show, but then he did it again."

"Ah."

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…" She shook her head and leaned back as the waiter put down their drinks. They ordered a marghareti pizza to split. She took a sip of her Diet Coke. "Except, I took him back the second time too."

Eric gulped a couple ounces of his beer.

"But third time's a charm. I think it was the cancer diagnosis that woke me up. I realized I was going to die one day and that I didn't want to waste my life trying to make some guy who didn't love me…love me."

Eric rapped his fingers on the table top, one at a time. He wondered, why had she married such a jerk, when she hadn't married _him_? "I never cheated on you."

"I know."

"Or did anything…I mean…." He shook his head and finished quietly, "anything."

"You were a good boyfriend, Eric."

"Then…why?" He couldn't believe he'd humbled himself enough to ask the question. Hastily, he said, "Not that it matters anymore."

She smiled weakly. "A wound like that, even when it heals, it leaves a scar."

She was right. There'd been a few times in his marriage when he could remember being afraid he might lose Tami, even though she'd never given him cause to doubt her fidelity. One was when she refused to move to Austin with him. Another was when she'd watched Mo McArnold taking off in that helicopter, admiration shinning in her eyes. Yet another was when she wanted to take the Braemore offer, and he thought, "She'll get in with that college crowd, and I won't seem so successful anymore." The feeling surfaced again soon after she told him she _wasn't_ taking the Braemore job, which was a funny time to doubt her devotion to him, since she'd just given up something really important _for_ him. But he'd looked at that stationary, with Braemore emblazoned across the top, and the job offer below, and he'd thought, "What if I make her stay in Dillon, and that makes her unhappy, and she leaves me, like my mother left my father?" Maybe somewhere else in the recess of his mind, there'd also been – "Like Cindy left me."

Eric had never spoken of these doubts openly with Tami, largely because he knew they were entirely unfounded, knew she'd proven her dedication to their marriage time and time again. But that didn't stop him from _feeling_ them, and then silencing them as quickly as he could.

"That was so long ago," he said. "I'm very happy in my marriage. With my family. I've been blessed."

"I'm glad for that, Eric. You were always a good guy. You deserve happiness."

"So do you," he said automatically.

"You don't believe that. Come on, admit it. Part of you thinks I got what was coming to me."

"No," he lied.

She smiled into her Diet Coke. The waiter brought the pizza. "Wow, fast," she said.

Eric bowed his head and said a quick, silent grace before he grabbed a slice.

"When did you start saying grace before meals?" she asked.

He'd been a self-professed agnostic when he started dating Cindy. It was as close as he came to rebellion against his church-going, Episcopalian mother, and it was a sort of bond he had with his father, who had always grumbled about his mother's habit of attending.

Eric and Dad sometimes played hooky together (Bobby never did, because he liked to see the girls all dressed up for church and to flirt with them). Eric and his father stayed home from church and watched football at least twice a month during the season, and those were some of the few times Eric could remember his father just hanging out with him and not criticizing him. He'd held onto those rare warm Sunday memories, even to this day.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess when I started working at First United Methodist. I got a job as a janitor there, after you left. The minister….my wife's uncle actually…I guess he helped me realize that when you're thankful for the things you have, you stop noticing so much the things you don't." He paused and then admitted, "I was really angry after you left. I hated the world. We were together _four_ years. You were my only girlfriend that entire time." He'd given up lots of opportunities to date other girls. "I was ready to marry you."

"I know. I wish I could have loved you back. And I thought I did, at one time. But then…I stopped."

"When?"

"I don't know," she answered. "More than a year before you proposed."

"Then why did you say _yes_?" The pizza sat losing heat between them.

"I felt…obligated. I couldn't figure out _why_ I didn't love you. There was no reason I _shouldn't_. You were good-looking. Responsible. Smart, even though you were kind of single-minded about football. I never liked football, by the way. I just pretended to."

"You were a cheerleader for two years."

"That's what you do in Texas. You don't join the math club."

He ate his slice of pizza and wiped his fingers.

"Do your daughters cheerlead?" she asked.

He snorted. "Gracie's only in preschool. Julie hated the idea." He looked at her toying with her pizza, cutting it into small pieces and taking tiny bites. "Why do you think you _didn't_ love me?" he asked.

He hadn't expected the conversation to go like this. He had expected to listen to whatever she had to say, accept her apology, make a little uncomfortable small talk, and then quickly be on his way. He hadn't expected things to twist and turn to a point of openness, at least not on _his_ part. He wasn't even sure how they had.

"Probably because I didn't love myself."

He tried not to roll his eyes, but he failed.

"Don't laugh," she said. "it sounds cheesy, but it's true. You know how my dad left when I was little. And how my mom used to constantly tell me I was fat."

"She was a cruel witch, that woman." Eric had completely forgotten about Cindy's mother, and how angry that woman had once made him by belittling her daughter. "You were _fit_."

"Yeah, I was a fit size 10. That's another reason I quit cheerleading. I was the _only_ size 10."

She'd told him she quit because she sprained her ankle and couldn't do the moves anymore.

"But you were beautiful. I mean…you still are. That's not a compliment! I mean, it is, but it's not a…I'm happily married."

"I know. And she's a lucky woman. You made me feel good about myself, Eric. Really good. But I think…what I loved was you making me feel good. And that wasn't fair to you. To put all that on you. Because what if you couldn't make me feel good about myself one day? What if we were married, and _you_ needed to feel good? And…I don't guess I'm making any sense, am I?"

"I think I get what you mean. It has to be mutual, the support in marriage. And it did feel a little one way with us, when I look back. I guess I didn't notice so much because I already had other support."

He'd been fairly popular in high school, as the star quarterback. Girls complimented him frequently. Guys wanted to be him. His mother had always been an encourager, a champion of everything he wanted to be and do, even if his father had sometimes dragged him down. Even Bobby, for all their sibling rivalry, had supported him.

"Tami," Eric said, "she's an amazing support. God, I don't know how I'd have done half the things I've done without her." He took a bite of his second piece of pizza. "I'm sorry you didn't find that. For you."

She shrugged. "I love my career. I know it doesn't sound exciting. Accounting. But I love it. I have friends. And I have my life. Like you said, being grateful for the things you have…it makes you think less about the things you don't."

He nodded.

"I'm sorry, Eric. I'm sorry for the way I hurt you. I'm sorry I was a coward and I just took off, that I didn't have the words or the courage or the understanding to explain why I _needed_ to leave. I'm sorry I didn't leave sooner, so you wouldn't have wasted so much time with me."

"Nah. It wasn't wasted. I learned how to be in a steady relationship, for one, instead of just chasing girls, which is what I might have been doing otherwise. And if you'd broken up with me sooner, I might have ended up with someone other than Tami…and no one could be as right for me as Tami."

They talked some more. Eric ate two more slices of pizza, but Cindy had only one. She insisted he polish off the last slice, and he did.

When they were in the parking lot, Eric with his keys in one hand, he said, "I didn't want to go to lunch with you. I just agreed to get you out of my office. But I'm glad we talked."

"I am too."

"Next time, you'll meet my wife."

"I don't think there should be a next time," she said. "This time was perfect. This time was enough."

He nodded. "A'ight. Good luck to you."

She smiled. "Can I hug you goodbye?"

"Uh…" Tami had hugged Mo, hadn't she? Mo had kissed her on the cheek at least three times. "Sure." He made sure their bodies weren't touching too closely. He'd never been a cheek kisser, like some southern men, so he didn't do that. But _she_ kissed _his_ cheek - a short, quick, tender peck. A _goodbye_ kiss.

"Nice seeing you again, Eric," she said, and slipped away.

He tossed his keys up and down in his hand. Funny, he thought, how people weren't always as they seemed. Josh had appeared to have good intentions, and they'd been ill. Cindy had appeared to have suspicious intentions (at least to Tami, and, he had to admit, also to him), and they'd been good.

Life wasn't always black and white he thought as he slipped into his SUV. He should have learned that in Dillon.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-two**

"Wow, " Robert said as he put the car in park in the lot of the complex. The sun was setting. They hadn't gotten out of the hospital as early as they expected. "You sure know how to pick them. Is that a fire hydrant spewing water?" He was joking, of course. It wasn't summer. No one had torn apart the fire hydrant. Yet.

"There's gold in them there hills," Uncle Raymond quipped from the back seat.

Tami picked up her purse from off the floor and opened her passenger side door and then opened Uncle Raymond's door for him. Robert got the bags – the tote bag the hospital had given Uncle Raymond, Tami's suitcase, and his own backpack. Tami wondered if he'd planned to stay the night before he'd even driven to Tyler.

"Good God," he said. "You planning to stay for a month, Tami?" He feigned strain as he hefted her suitcase from the ground.

"I do _not_ overpack," she insisted.

The paint on the exterior of the building was peeling. A man lounged in a chair outside on the second floor as they made their way slowly up the stairwell. Tami smelled the weed rolling off him. "Hey, Martin," Uncle Raymond said. "How's it hanging?"

"Hey, Rev. What was with the ambulance?"

Uncle Raymond patted his chest. "Just the old ticker. It's fixed up now."

"Better be," the man said and stared out over the banister.

Robert eyed him warily. They began up the next flight of stairs. Tami wished there was an elevator, because Uncle Raymond was slowly plodding his way up. Fortunately, he was only on the third of six floors.

When they got Uncle Raymond settled in a lounging position on the couch, with the TV on ("That's tiny," Robert said), Tami retreated to the privacy of the single bedroom to call Eric. She sat in Uncle Raymond's arm chair, which he had positioned beside a makeshift bookcase.

"What's this with you asking Robert about adoption records?" she asked as soon as he picked up. In the background, she could hear Gracie calling _Daaaaaady!_

"Hold on," he said.

There were soft murmurs, Gracie's squeal of delight, the sound of footsteps, followed by a sliding glass door, and then crickets chirping.

**[FNL]**

Eric sat on the back porch in a rocking chair, cell phone to his ear. This was much like the rocking chairs Uncle Raymond used to have on his porch. They sure had grown up, him and Tami. They were ready to grow old together.

"Why did you call Robert and ask about adoption records?" she repeated.

"He called you?"

"He's _here_," she said.

"_There?_ Why?"

"He was worried about us, I guess. Wanted to make sure we were okay. He said you called him, asked a bunch of weird questions about adoption records, and hung up."

Damn Bobby. How was he going to avoid telling her what Josh had said now? "How's Raymond?" he asked.

"My uncle's fine. Stubborn as ever, but fine. Why did you call Robert and ask him those things?"

Eric sighed. "I don't want to have this conversation right now, when I'm not there to help you through it."

"Help me through what?"

"Can we just…we'll talk when you get home. Trust me on this."

"Eric, you can't just drop ominous hints and then tell me to pretend I didn't hear them."

"Trust me. Please. I want to have this conversation in person."

"It has to do with Josh, obviously." He could hear the emotions in her voice – irritation, righteousness, _hurt_. "Eric, your jealousy has gone too far. I was understanding of your position at first, but this is getting ridiculous. So you're _suspicious_ he isn't my son now? After I've already met him for lunch four times, after he looks like me, after I saw a photocopy of the birth certificate?"

Maybe Josh had been right. Maybe she _wouldn't_ believe him. Maybe this wasn't the kid's first rodeo.

But no, Eric thought. He knew his wife, and he knew their relationship. When they were together, he'd work her through this truth. "Please, Tami. Let's talk about all this when you get home."

"Fine. How was your date with Cindy this afternoon?"

It was as if she was looking for further reason to be mad at him. "It wasn't a date."

"You had lunch. Alone together."

"You _told_ me to go ahead."

Tami was silent on the other end of the line.

"She just wanted to say she was sorry. She was pretty sincere about it. She didn't come on to me at all."

"You wouldn't know if she had."

"I'm not that dense, Tami."

Silence again.

"Listen, babe, I know you're mad at me right now. And I guess I'm not going to change that over the phone. But I love you. And I want you to know that."

"Then maybe you should act like it and not look for reasons to undermine my re-connection with my son."

"A'ight. Tell your uncle I said hi. Is Bobby staying with y'all?"

"Yes. He's taking me to the airport on Monday."

Eric was ticked at his brother for telling Tami about his call, but he was relieved that he'd be there in the apartment with them. Tami's description of the place had left him worried. "Okay. We had a little snow this afternoon," he told her. "Just a few flakes. Early for that."

"Uh-huh."

"Gracie did a cartwheel," he said. "All by herself."

"Good for her."

"I love you, Tami."

"I have to go. They're waiting for me in the other room."

"Wait. Let me talk to Bobby."

There was silence, the sound of a door creaking then Bobby: "Howdy, Eric."

"Why did you tell Tami about my call?"

"Uh…" More silence, followed by the sound of another door opening and closing, and then a car alarm. Robert must be on the apartment's balcony. "How in the hell was I supposed to know you hadn't told her about whatever the hell you were calling about? Some of us don't keep secrets from our wives."

"I'm not…it's only temporary. There's a damn good reason. I can't talk about it with you because that would be a violation of…I just can't." In the background, the car alarm stopped suddenly. "Listen, how mad does she seem to be? At me?"

"She says you two are solid. I don't think you have anything to worry about. But I think I've finally got this figured out. Tami shows up in North Dillon to live with her Uncle Raymond the summer before her senior year of high school. All the way from Kingsville. Nothing too odd in that. A third of the kids in North Dillon didn't live with their actual parents. Hell, you lived with me for two years. But here's what I'm thinking. She moved out of Kingsville because she'd just had a baby. Put it up for adoption. New life start and all that."

"Don't ever – "

"- My lips are sealed, Eric."

"- Don't even tell Maria."

"Oh, I'm going to tell Maria. Are you serious? Would you not tell Tami? She won't tell anybody though."

Eric sighed.

Robert laughed. "It's kind of funny she would have been in that position, when she was so demure with you. I remember it was about a year you were dating her before you got laid, and you were frustrated as hell."

"It was six months. And it's ridiculous to use the words demure and Tami in the same sentence."

"Maria only made me wait four months. So I win that one."

Another car alarm went off.

"Jesus. Where are you, Bobby? In a war zone? "

"Your wife's uncle is religious nutjob, Eric. Thinks he can save the world, apparently. But I like him." He spoke louder over the alarm. "So now that the cat's out of the bag, tell me what you're not telling Tami."

Eric did. "And I just want to tell her face to face," he concluded.

The car alarm mercifully stopped.

"Yeah, that's not the sort of thing you can tell a woman over the phone. Poor Tami."

"Look," Eric said, "don't tell her you know she had a kid. It'll make her feel awkward."

"You better tell her I know when she gets home though. She's going to be pissed if she ever finds out I know and you know I know and you didn't tell her, you know?"

"I know. I will."

"How's Julie?" Bobby asked.

"She doesn't know about Tami having had that baby. Don't tell her. If anyone is going to tell her, it's going to be us."

"Wasn't planning on it. Just asking after my niece. Rob, Jr. is graduating next month, finally, a semester late."

"Julie and Matt have set a wedding date for next year. Right in the middle of football season, too. I think she did it to test me. Who gets married in October?"

"Well, October is kind of nice in Texas. Not too hot, not too cold. They're having it in Texas, right?"

"Yeah," Eric conceded. "So all their old friends can come, and it'll be easier for the extended family, too. She declared a major in English. I'm not sure what she's going to do with that degree. I think she thinks she's going to stroll into some professorate."

"I win the kids with useless majors contest," Bobby said. "Philosophy," he muttered. "You know, because philosophers are in such high demand these days."

Gracie was now pressing her face against the window. "Listen, I've got to go. I need to put the little one to bed. Put in a good word for me with Tami."

"Will do."

"And don't flirt with her too much."

"I will only flirt with her the ideal amount."

Eric hung up and let out a sigh that turned to foggy breath in the cold fall air. His hands were getting cold. He waved at Gracie and began walking toward the house.

**[FNL]**

When Eric emerged from Gracie's bedroom, he could hear his cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter where he'd left it. He answered it hastily without checking the caller ID, hoping it was Tami calling to say she was sorry for being so short with him and that she loved him too.

"Have you thought anymore about my offer? I understand Tami's out of town."

Eric's back teeth clamped together.

"I talked to Tami," Josh said.

"What?"

"I called to give her my condolences about her uncle, you know, and to check up on her. I also did a little research and found out Julie lives in a studio apartment in the art district. How can a college student afford that?"

"I know you're not Tami's son."

"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. Does it matter? She _has_ a son. And pretty soon, your daughter's going to know that. How's she going to feel, to think that her parents lied to her for nineteen years? Nineteen years. That's a long time to lie to someone."

"It wasn't a _lie_. We just didn't tell her."

"Think she'll see it that way?"

"What do you want?" Eric asked.

"$10,000. In cash. Meet me Sunday evening at the food court in Foursquare mall before Tami gets home, give me the money, and I'll be out of your life. Bank's open until noon on Saturday right?"

"What makes you think I have that kind of cash?"

"Come on. You're a two-income, middle class family. I'm sure you have at least ten thousand sitting in your savings account."

He was right. "Okay," Eric said, without any real intention of giving him the money. "What time?"

"5 PM."

There would be a crowd then.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-three**

Tami swung the bat and missed the ball yet again. This time she bent over and laughed. Behind her, tall lights flooded the batting cage, illuminating it in the midst of the night's darkness.

"No, let me show you," Robert insisted.

Uncle Raymond, still worn out from the surgery, had gone to bed at eight. Tami had flipped through his four English-speaking television channels and sighed in boredom. She remembered begging him to get cable TV when she was living with him during her first year of community college. He'd staunchly refused such "an unintelligent waste of money." Then, it had been for the best. She hadn't need to waste a minute, when she had to study for classes, waitress for money, and talk to Eric on the phone as often as possible, between his all-too-rare visits home to North Dillon. Tonight, however, she had needed a distraction. Robert, tapping away at his iPhone, had suggested the batting cages. "I found some twenty minutes away that are open until eleven. And you look mad. Maybe you could benefit from hitting something."

He now put his arms over hers and showed her how to swing properly. "Didn't Eric teach you this?"

"Eric played football," she said.

"He played baseball, too. Until his junior year of high school, anyway."

"That was before I met him," Tami reminded him.

"Now that I think about it, he wasn't much good. Not as good as I was at football, anyway. I was better at my back-up sport than he was at his."

She laughed. Their perineal sibling rivalry still amused her, but only because she knew that, beneath it all, they loved each other.

He stepped aside. "Sorry. I shouldn't be so chummy. I promised Eric I wouldn't flirt with you _too_ much. Lucky for him, he's better looking than I am." He patted his beer belly. "Maria likes her men with a little meat, though."

Tami readied herself for the pitching machine and managed a few hits this go round. Afterward, she put the bat tip down against the ground and leaned on it while she turned to look at him. "Eric's better looking? Are you complimenting your brother?"

Robert shrugged. "He's a good-looking man. Good father too, isn't he?"

Tami eyed him with a raised eyebrow.

"Good husband?"

"Most of the time," she said, handing him the bat.

He cracked quite a few.

"You ever miss it?" she asked him when the machine had dispensed its last ball. "The minor leagues?"

He shrugged. "That was so very long ago. There were times I questioned myself for quitting…mostly when Maria and I were fighting…but it was for the best. I wasn't ever going to make the majors. The minors paid peanuts. And I had a life to live…a woman to convince to marry me…and I already had the handyman business going. It made sense." He handed her the bat. "My father still thinks I should have made it to the majors," he continued, "just like he thinks Eric should have made it to the NFL. For some reason, though, he always gave Eric the harder time."

"He's more of a football fan than a baseball fan," Tami said.

They began to walk away from the cage and sat on a bench.

"But Eric never even had a chance," Robert said. "I mean, he did manage to walk-on to the Aggies after he transferred, but the coach hardly ever played him at all. I don't know why my Dad ever thought…" He shook his head. "Never congratulated him when he made head coach of the Panthers, either. Never said a word."

"Or when he got to be the QB coach for TMU. I sometimes wonder if Eric regretted quitting that."

"Of course he didn't regret putting his family first. You married a good man, Tami. I hope you know that."

She laughed and stood up. "What's with all the Eric cheerleading tonight? It's really unlike you."

"He knew you were pissed at him about something," he said, rising to follow her, "and he asked me to put in a good word for him." He pulled his car keys from his pocket. "You two - if you don't make it – no on makes it. You need to call him again tonight, give him a little reassurance."

**[FNL]**

After he'd put Gracie to bed, Eric had made a couple of phone calls. He'd had to leave a message with the private investigator. Now he sat in his recliner sipping a beer and watching some game tape. When his cell rang, he assumed it was Watson, picked it up without looking at the caller ID, and said, "So you got my update?"

"Your update about what?" Tami asked.

He set down his beer and paused the game film. "Uh…nothing…I thought you were Coach Washington."

"You never let those poor men sleep, do you, hon? It's almost midnight. Aren't you guys out of the running now anyway?"

"Um…yeah…it was about next season. Your uncle okay?" He wasn't expecting a late night call.

"Yeah. He's been asleep since eight. Robert and I went batting."

"Batting?"

"Batting cages."

Eric turned off the TV altogether and then plucked up his beer again. "Was that in a safe neighborhood?"

"Safe enough. I was with Robert."

"He try to show you how to do it properly? That was always his trick in high school."

"Good Lord, Eric. Your brother is harmless."

"I know he's harmless, but he does have a little bit of a crush on you. Has for years."

"You think every man has a crush on me."

He took a sip of his beer and said, "Why wouldn't they?" Her laugh made him smile. "So you're a'ight? I just wasn't expecting such a late call."

"I just wanted to call to say I love you before I went to bed."

Eric hadn't realized how completely uptight he was about their earlier fight until the tension drained out of him at the sound of her words. "I love you too, babe."

"And I'm going to be patient and wait to hear you out until I get home, although I don't know why you're being so suspicious of Josh. I've gotten to know him over the past four meetings, hon. We've talked for hours. He's a good kid."

Eric swallowed. "How many balls did you hit?" he asked.

"Let's just say I won't be joining the Rangers."

**[FNL]**

"This is where you have church?" Robert asked, glancing around at the dilapidated public playground where they had walked. Some people in thick jackets - thicker than was needed for the Texas weather - sat at picnic benches under the shade of an awning. One sat on the table, holding a guitar.

"Haven't quite raised the funds for a building yet," Uncle Raymond said. "Don't think that's like to happen anytime…ever."

Tami smiled lightly and followed her uncle beneath the steeple – an awning that covered the picnic tables. People began to greet him and ask about his heart.

**[FNL]**

Gracie plopped down on the couch beside Eric and said, "Aren't we going to Sunday School?"

"Nah…not today. Daddy has to finish watching this football game he recorded."

Tami and Eric had done a bit of church hopping when they came to Philadelphia and had finally settled into one. Methodist, of course. It was what Tami had been used to her whole life, and Eric didn't really care, as long as there was a real choir and no rock band. If he wanted to go to a rock concert, he'd go to a _real_ rock concert. Not that he'd been to one since he was twenty-two and Julie was born.

"But we always go to Sunday School."

_Gracie_ always went to Sunday School. Tami and Eric hung out in the coffee lounge of the church while Tami chatted with people. Eric wasn't going to sit through a church social hour without Tami, though. "We can miss it one time. It's okay. We'll still go to big church. We'll go to the late service."

His cell phone rang on the coffee table where'd he left it last night after chatting with Tami. He looked at the caller ID and saw that it was Watson, finally returning his message.

"Don't pay the bribe," Watson said.

"Wasn't planning on it." Eric rose and retreated to the kitchen where Gracie couldn't hear him. "I've called the police."

"And was I right? Did they seem disinterested?"

"Nah." He sat on a stool at the kitchen bar. "I didn't call the Philly P.D. I live in Narberth, and he wants to meet me at a mall in Narberth, so I called the Narberth police department. They don't have quite as much to do. They were interested. They want me to help them do a sting operation. They're going to have me pretend to deliver the money."

"All right. Then have them contact me and I'll hand over the information I've acquired so far. I got in contact with John Mason. Found him at a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C."

"He's homeless?"

"No. He _runs_ the shelter. Well, his non-profit does, but he puts in time there in person too."

That was really no less surprising than the idea that the man was homeless. Eric had rarely thought about John Mason, but on the few occasions when he did, he pictured an arrogant, wannabe rock musician who womanized his way through entire towns. He wasn't sure why he pictured that. Tami had said he was a drummer, and good-looking, and that, coupled with the way he had treated Tami, was all Eric knew of John Mason. He certainly didn't picture a man ladling soup into the bowls of the hungry.

"I spoke to him, and he told me that a year ago, someone contacted him through the registry, claiming to be his son. Like I said, I think Josh Sanderson – or whoever he really is – hacked into the registry and started contacting people who looked like easy marks. Anyway, this kid talked John Mason into giving him some money for college. $15,000. And then Mr. Mason never saw him again. He didn't report it to the police because he felt stupid for getting swindled, which is what these guys rely on. But when I told him what my suspicions were and that this guy was now trying to swindle the mother of his child, he came clean with me."

Eric didn't like those words, _the mother of his child_, but he tried not to react to it. When he hung up the phone, he let out a heavy breath. Things were falling into place, but Tami was still in the dark, and he hated that he would have to enlighten her.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

Eric ended up sending Gracie to spend Sunday evening with the Lancasters. He and Tami owed them about ten babysitting gigs for their younger son at this point. The police had Eric go to the mall to appear to deliver the bribe money – nothing but an empty bag. Plain-clothesed detectives accompanied him and blended into the crowd.

Eric's palms were sweaty when he surveyed the food court for the face he'd once thought resembled Tami's. His palms didn't even get sweaty on game day. He was just beginning to think the kid wasn't going to show when he felt someone bump into him from behind, and in an instant, the bag was gone. He'd turned three ways before he turned the right way and saw Josh – or whatever his name really was – disappearing into a crowded hallway. It took all of his self-discipline not to pursue the kid and punch him in the face. Instead, he left the pursuit to the two men who rose from a table at the food court and followed Josh.

A third undercover officer came up to Eric and said, "They'll get him." It was good Josh had chosen to do the exchange in a mall in Narberth instead of Philadelphia, because the Narberth police were apparently bored. They had treated this exchange like the sting of the century.

"Will the case hold up in court?" Eric asked the detective, who shrugged, and said, "The prosecutor will keep you posted. You'll need to testify. You and your wife. The prosecutor will talk to John Mason and see if he can get him to testify as well. We're also going to dig into this a little further. Chances are, you and Mason aren't his first marks."

When Eric picked up Gracie from the neighbors' later that night, he hugged her tight. "I've got good kids," he said. "Good kids."

He tried not to think about telling Tami, but he could feel his heart racing in his chest after he put Gracie to bed.

**[FNL]**

Tami missed those pre-September 11th days when people would meet you at the gate, when you'd step off the plane and fall into somebody's arms. Eric wasn't waiting at the gate, of course. He was circling around outside in the car while she picked up her suitcase. They had barely spoken on Sunday and had only texted one another on Monday to arrange pick up.

Eric pulled over and leapt from the car when she ventured outside of baggage claim. He put her suitcase in the trunk and opened her door. She saw the single red rose on the seat and picked it up while he got back into the driver's side. She couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten her flowers for no reason.

"Hungry?" he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

"Extremely." She looked at the little handwritten tag tied to the stem of the rose, which said, _You're beautiful. I love you._ She sniffed the rose. Maybe he was feeling bad about his suspicions regarding Josh, and he was going to drop the subject and be supportive over her growing relationship with him.

He took her to a nice restauraunt. Gracie was at the Lancasters. "We're babysitting Gabriel all next weekend," he told her. Gabriel was the Lancasters' six-year-old son. "They're going on a weekend getaway. Payback time."

Tami was hungry. She devoured the food. They talked a little about Uncle Raymond, but he didn't mention Josh the entire time. Maybe he had decided his petty jealousy was embarrassing and he was going to drop the topic. When they arrived at home, as soon as Tami got out of the car, she turned to head across the street to the Lancaster's to pick up Gracie.

Eric stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "They don't expect us for another hour. Let's just go inside for a bit. Just you and me. "

Was he expecting to get laid? She really wasn't in a mood, not with the way he'd been behaving over Josh. "I want to see my daughter, Eric."

"We _need_ to talk."

His tone was so deadly serious that it frightened her. She followed him inside.

"Sit down," he told her.

She sat on the couch, and he sat beside her. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "I have to tell you something, and it's going to hurt you. I'm so sorry that I have to hurt you like this."

**[FNL]**

Eric plowed through the story, from that first evening at the resteraunt when Josh hinted at blackmail, through the private investigation, and on to the arrest.

At first, Tami appeared numb. Soon enough, however, that numbness gave way to rage. "How dare he manipulate me like that! Make me think he was….He's _not_ my son?"

Eric shook his head. "He faked the birth certificate. The police say he's probably done this before. More than once. I'm so sorry, babe." He reached for her, but she flinched.

She stood and paced. "I want to smack him in the face."

"I wish you could."

"I want to hit something," she said.

"Then hit something."

"What?"

"Me?" he volunteered.

"No! I'm not going to hit you!"

She ended up going to the gym, while Eric got Gracie from across the street and then readied her for bed. He was just beginning the first bedtime story when Tami came back inside and insisted on taking over.

"You smell funny," Gracie said when she sat on the bed beside her and opened the Roald Dahl book.

"Don't be rude, Gracie," Eric admonished her.

"I just worked out," Tami said. Probably with a punching bag, Eric thought. "I guess I don't get a hug hello, then? I missed you lots."

Gracie hugged her tight. "There. But you need a shower."

Eric shook his head and left them alone.

After Tami showered, she joined him in bed, sliding into his arms, where, for the first time, she began to cry.

In half an hour, her tears were at last spent. Twenty minutes later, Eric thought she was asleep, but her voice interrupted his worries. "I'm sorry," she said.

"What?"

"I'm sorry for getting so mad at you. I thought you were being weirdly suspicious. If you had just told me as _soon_ as he tried to blackmail you – "

"- While you were on your way to the hospital? When you didn't know if your uncle was going to live or die?"

She sighed. "Okay, I get that, but why not tell me on the phone the other day after you knew my uncle pulled through?"

"And not be there to hold you when you found out?" He squeezed her tight.

She put a hand on his chest, a chin on her hand, and looked in his eyes. "Make love to me."

He peered at her through the street light filtering in through the blinds on the window. "_Now?_ You sure? You're not too upset about the whole thing with – "

She inched up and kissed his lips. "It would be comforting."

"A'ight." He rolled to the side with her and slid a hand beneath her shirt, letting it rest lightly on her hip. He kissed the base of her neck and whispered, "I want to comfort you."


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

Tami was just drifting off to sleep in the security of Eric's embrace, her bare back pressed against his chest, when she felt his warm breath on her cheek. "You still awake?" he whispered.

She opened one eye. He was usually the one to fall asleep first after sex. "I am now."

"Sorry."

She turned in his arms and kissed his lips.

"Listen," he said, "don't be mad at me – "

Tami tensed. No statement prefaced with those words was ever good news. "Let me guess. Cindy came onto you Saturday even though you said she didn't. What happened? "

"Nah. This isn't about Cindy. I told you. She didn't make any kind of pass at me."

"Didn't try to hug you or anything?"

"Uh…" He pulled back from her a little bit. "Just like Mo did with you. Hug goodbye. Kiss on the cheek. Like Mo did."

Tami narrowed her eyes.

"Tami, she just wanted to say she was sorry. It was a good conversation. It was good closure for me. I didn't even know I needed closure. But I did."

"Okay." She kissed his cheek tenderly. "I'm glad you got that, sugar. So then what am I _not_ supposed to be mad at you about?"

Eric sighed. "Bobby knows. He guessed. About you having had a baby and putting it up for adoption. I don't know how…he just guessed."

"I know how!" Eric often did this. He played dumb when he thought he might be in trouble. He hadn't learned that it just made her angrier than she might have otherwise been. "Because you called him out of the blue and asked how to get adoption records unsealed and then hung up on him when he started asking questions!"

"Yeah, okay," he admitted. Now he was moving into his it's-no-big-deal defense mode, "that's probably why. Anyway, I told him about the blackmail and all that when we talked Saturday night."

"Before you told me!"

"Tami, I _waited_ to tell you because I _had_ to be there for you."

She took a calming breath. She couldn't imagine getting that news hundreds of mile away in Texas and having to rely on Robert and Uncle Raymond for comfort instead of the man who had supported her and slept beside her for over twenty years. "I'm glad you did," she admitted. "I needed you tonight." She winced. "Robert's not going to tell anyone is he?"

Eric shook his head. "Well, except Maria."

"I don't want Maria to know too!"

He shrugged. "Taylors can't keep secrets from their wives. Not for long any way. Not even my dad could do that."

"I know Maria won't tell anyone. I just don't like the idea of people knowing. When it happened…all the _judgment_, Eric. I can't even begin to describe it. I _hate_ that feeling."

He reached out and caressed her cheek. "Tami, I've never met a man who's less judgmental than Bobby. Hell, he's got me beat there too." He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. "But I have the hottest wife."

Tami frowned. "I can't believe he knew the whole weekend. We spent so much time together, and he never let on in the least."

"Because he doesn't care. And neither will Maria."

"But wasn't he shocked when you confirmed it?"

Eric leaned back against the headboard. "Not really."

"Why? He _should_ have been shocked! I wasn't that sort of girl when he first met me."

"Listen, Bobby was a bit of playboy in high school. He fooled around with a lot of girls before Maria told him steady or nothing. You met him after he was already married and settled, but he was kind of wild before that. He probably figures he's lucky he didn't knock up some girl himself. He probably just thinks you were a normal teenager. Hell, he used to think I was a freak because I just had the one girlfriend for years."

Tami laughed and inched closer. She kissed his earlobe and whispered, "You are a bit of a freak."

She yelped when he grabbed her by the waist and rolled her under himself. Nipping at her neck, he asked, "You want to get freaky with me?"

She giggled as he continued his playful assault, trailing kisses down her collar bone.

**[FNL]**

Eric was rubbing the sleep dust out of his eyes when he staggered into the kitchen to find Gracie sitting at the kitchen table and writing A+++ in red ink across the top of one of the papers he had left out yesterday afternoon. "No, sweetheart," he said, plucking the pen from her little hand, "you can't grade Daddy's papers. Daddy has to do that."

"But he got an A+++!" she said.

_Nobody_ got an A+++ in Coach Taylor's government class.

The toaster dinged on the counter and four strawberry frosted pop tarts sprung out. Gracie ran and grabbed a plastic plate out of a low cabinet. They'd put all of her dishware in the lowest cabinet, so she could reach it and make her own breakfast. The preschooler was an unnaturally early riser, even on Saturdays. They'd taught her to use the remote control to find her cartoons as well.

Eric gathered the strewn papers into a stack and inserted them in the briefcase he'd left propped against the leg of the table. He'd given all his attention to Tami last night, so he'd have to finish grading them during his first planning period. Now that the Pioneers were out of the running for State, he supposed he could use the time he usually used to watch game tape.

"Gracie," he said. "You can't have four pop tarts. You can only have one, then something healthy. You know the rule."

"But there are four slots in the toaster!" She drew her little neon green step stool closer to the counter and climbed up on it.

"You don't have to fill them all. The toaster will work with one pop tart."

"No it won't. You have to use all four slots." She began to pull the hot pastries from the toaster, saying, "Ow ow!" as she plopped them on the plate.

"No you don't," he insisted.

"Yes you do." She dropped the fourth pop tart on top of two of the others.

"Where's your mother?"

"Reading sad stories in the office."

He put his briefcase in the chair. "What?"

"I asked her why she was crying, and she said she was reading sad stories."

Eric made his way to the fourth bedroom, or what the realtor had called a bedroom. It had no closet, and they'd converted it into a study, which Tami had completely taken over, leaving him to make a corner in the laundry room into his office. Sure enough she was there, sitting in the chair, her arms propped on the desk, her face buried in her hands – crying.

"Hey, hey," he said softly and came and put an arm around her shoulders. She shrugged him off. Sometimes she didn't like to be touched when she was upset. He knew that, and he hated it, because holding her was easy. What else was he supposed to do?

He hovered at the corner of the desk. "This about Josh?"

"Of course it's about Josh!" she shouted.

He stepped back a little. "A'ight," he whispered.

"Sorry," she muttered. "I just feel like such a fool! I was so ready to believe him. I _did_ believe him. I thought I was forgiven for what I did. But he wasn't even my son!" She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I don't know how I'm going to work today."

"Take the day off."

"No! I can't. I've already taken three days off and missed a meeting!"

"A'ight," he said. He didn't like being the target of her anger when he was only trying to help, but he supposed she needed a target at the moment. "Can I get you some…coffee?"

"Coffee? I thought I found a son, and then I lost him. I got screwed over. I made an idiot of myself. And you think coffee is going to fix that?"

"Fine. I'll just leave you alone." He headed for the door.

As he was just through the frame, she said, "Wait." He turned. "I'm sorry. Thank you, sugar, for trying to help. I'm just going to be a wreck for the next week or two. On and off. Just so you know. "

"Well I'll be here. For the next week or two. Just so you know." She smiled weakly. He smiled back. "Probably even for the next decade or two," he said.

"You planning to leave me in your sixties?" she asked.

"Or three or four or five decades." He walked forward and kissed the top of her head. "Just let me know if you need me," he whispered before he disappeared.


	26. Chapter 26

**A/N:** Last chapter. Hope you enjoyed this story. I'm going on vacation, so I wanted to wrap it up before I left.

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

Eric turned the ignition off and looked over at Tami in the passenger's seat. "You ready for this?"

She unlocked her car door. "I feel like we've spent too much time in police stations in our lives, don't you?"

He took her hand as they walked to the front door. The detectives wanted to meet with them to go over some details of the upcoming court case, and the prosecutor was going to be there too. Also present would be John Mason, because the prosecutor had talked him into testifying as well.

They were led to a conference room by one of the detectives. There were two men already seated at the table, both wearing suits and ties. One must be the prosecutor, and the other John Mason. Tami's eyes told Eric which was which, though he would have guessed Mason to be the better looking of the two anyway. John Mason had a solid head of silver hair, but a young face, a muscular figure, and baby blue eyes.

The couple sat down side by side across from the father of Tami's child, and Eric, jaw set tight, stared directly at him. John Mason studied the lines of the conference table. He only looked up when the prosecutor began speaking.

"So you first met with defendant in October of last year?"

"Yeah," John answered, watching his own fingers trace the lines of the table. His eyes occasionally flitted to the prosecutor's but went nowhere near Tami's or Eric's. "He uh...contacted me through the registry, so I thought he was legitimate."

"He hacked in to the system," the detective said, "and took a lot of information. He created false accounts as well, and he's contacted others."

"In court," the prosecutor said, "when you testify, the defense is going to paint you as a callous man who abandonded his child and the mother of his child without a second thought."

"And it wouldn't be innacurate," John said. He glanced at Tami.

Tami held his gaze. "Why were you looking for him?" she asked.

"It started when I found Jesus," John said.

Tami laughed sharply.

Eric's eyes remained cool.

"Laugh all you want," John Mason said. "But it's true. And I knew you had put our kid up for adoption – "

" - Our?" Tami raised her voice. "Where in the hell were you the nine months I was pregnant? When I gave birth? When I watched them take him away?" She shook her head. "_Our_," she muttered.

John sighed. "I wanted to make amends. So I…uh…signed up for the registry. But I didn't even know the actual birthdate. So I just put down the month and year and the town and my name and your name…I couldn't even remember your last name…I had to look it up in an old high school yearbook."

Eric gripped the arm of his chair and willed himself to remain calm.

"Anyway," John continued, "this kid took advantage of the fact that I wanted to make amends."

Eric watched Tami as she listened to this explanation and witnessed her eyes flicker and soften slightly.

"And I gave him money," John Mason said.

"Thought you could buy his forgiveness?" Tami asked.

"I don't know what I thought. For the last ten years, I've been trying to be a better man. You ever hear of Blood Parakeet?"

Eric leaned forward slightly. It sounded like the man had just said Blood Parakeet, which made no sense at all.

"What?" Tami asked.

"The band?" the detective asked with a raised eyebrow. "You're _that_ John Mason? The drummer and singer for Blood Parakeet?"

"I was. Then I quit and they got a new drummer. Then they disbanded a year later."

Eric turned to Tami with a questioning look and she shrugged.

"_Blood Parakeet_?" Eric asked. "What the hell kind of music is that?"

"It's kind of ska-infused heavy metal," John Mason explained, which left Eric even more confused. "Anyway, I made decent money. And by the time I left…I actually wanted to do something good with it."

"Because you found Jesus," Tami said incredulously.

"Yeah."

Eric said, "I didn't even know he was missing," and the stern line of Tami's lips twitched slightly.

When the prosecutor was done talking to them and everyone began to clear out of the room, Tami looked at John and said, "Could I have a moment alone with you?"

Eric's eyes flitted from Tami to John and then back to Tami, but he left, squeezing her shoulder in departure.

**[FNL]**

Tami wasn't sure what she was feeling when she eased back into the hard, faux leather chair across the conference table from the man to whom she had lost her virginity. Anger, curiosity, sadness all clawed about in her gut, trying to break free into words. He hadn't even looked at her all those years ago when she'd told him she decided not to abort and asked him to sign the parental release papers. He was barely looking at her now.

"I was fifteen," she said. "Fifteen and a virgin. And drunk."

"I didn't…" he lowered his voice and leaned forward slightly, "you wanted to! You were willing!" He looked anxiously at the door. "You didn't tell your husband I _raped_ you did you?" She could see the fear flickering across his face. Eric was the taller, stronger man and he'd been watching John Mason with angry eyes the entire time he was in the conference room.

"No. Because you didn't. I didn't say that. I didn't even imply that. I _let_ you use me. I've owned my part in that. Believe me, for nine months I owned it, and for years after I owned the scars."

He swallowed. "I was wrong to take advantage of that opportunity. And I was wrong to try to throw money at the problem to make it go away instead of helping you through it." He straightened up. "I thought of contacting you. When Josh showed up…" The kid's name, Tami had learned, was actually Anthony. "…he asked a lot of questions about you. Obviously he was planning his next con, but I just thought he was genuinely curious. I liked the kid. I _really_ came to like him. I was such a damn fool."

"I liked him too. I thought he was sincere."

"Anyway, I thought of contacting you to apologize. I've made some other apologies. Dozens of them. I looked you up on the Internet and found your bio on the Braemore website, and I realized you had a good life. Husband, two kids, career. You looked really happy in that picture. And I decided it wasn't a good idea, that I'd just be doing it for myself, to try to take some guilt off myself. So I didn't try to contact you. But now that we're here…I want to say…I'm sorry. And I hope you'll forgive me. I know you don't owe me any forgiveness."

"Well, now, that's what makes it forgiveness," she drawled. "My uncle once told me that we all need a little grace four our pasts."

"Sounds like your uncle was a wise man."

"He still is." She crossed her arms on the conference table. "I let go of my resentment against you a long time ago, or at least I _thought_ I had. But seeing you here today, hearing you say _our_ child…it all rose back up. I guess it's easy for people to pat themselves on the back and say they've forgiven someone when they never actually have to _see_ that person again." She could tell he was waiting for her to continue. "So I'll say it now, for what it's worth, since I don't expect to see you again, except maybe in court for this case." She looked him directly in the eyes. "I forgive you."

"Thank you."

She reached for her purse, but instead of standing, she paused and set it atop the conference table. "Did you ever find him? My son?"

John shook his head. "He's not on the registry. They wouldn't let me unseal the records. But they might let _you_. You were the _mother_. And if you could find him, I'd like to meet him. I'd like to say I'm sorry."

Tami looked at him earnestly. "For whose sake? His or yours?"

John seemed to consider this.

"He has a life, somewhere," she said. "A family. A mother and a father. And he's probably not looking for his past, because he's not on that registry."

"Aren't you curious?"

"I told my husband this, and it's the truth – I never stopped thinking about him. Yes, I'm curious. I'm more than curious. But my husband and I have talked about this again and again over the past few weeks."

They'd talked about the possibility of looking for her son, and they'd talked about telling Julie she had a half-brother. In the end, they had decided against both.

"We agree," she told John, "that it's not about my curiosity. It's not about my regret. It's about _him_. And I'm not sure what good unsealing those records and tracking him down and thrusting myself into his life would do him. Sometimes, if you love something, you have to let it go."

John nodded.

She stood up and slid the strap of her purse over her shoulder. "Tell Jesus I said hi," she said before strutting out the door.

**THE END**


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